Vigilant Operator Foils Train Robbery
A night operator at the Northern Pacific depot stops three armed train robbers in their tracks after a daring heist on a moving freight train.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Night operator S. A. Phelps at the Northern Pacific depot, who is gaining quite a reputation for capturing bad men, was on the job again last night. A short distance west of here, a hobo was beating his way on freight No. 602 and was held up and robbed by three fellow passengers. Just as the train was pulling into the station, the three robbers, all of whom were armed, made their victim jump from the train and took a shot at him as he sprawled in the alfalfa. The train did not stop here and was just showing its caboose lights to the town when the robbed man accosted Phelps with his hard-luck story. The operator immediately flashed the news to Pasco, and ten minutes later the three men were picked up in a restaurant near the depot, just as they were in the act of changing a ten-dollar bill which they had frisked from their victim. All three men carried revolvers and flashlights. They were loaded aboard one of the night passenger trains and taken to the county jail in Prosser.
“The operator immediately flashed the news to Pasco and ten minutes later the three men were picked up in a restaurant near the depot.”
Railroad hubs like Pasco and Kennewick have historically acted as points of surveillance and community security. The role of the station agent as a 'first responder' is a fascinating precursor to our modern digital era of instant notification and coordinated inter-city law enforcement.
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