A Desperate Jailbreak in Colfax
While awaiting trial for the embezzlement of grain, a local warehouse manager leads a daring escape from the county jail, resulting in a foot chase and a sheriff's pursuit.
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.
About an hour before the opening of his trial Tuesday morning for the embezzlement of J. D. Evans' barley, W. H. Clifford made a desperate attempt to escape, but was overhauled and recaptured by Sheriff Canutt after a race of over half a mile. Two bars of a jail corridor window had been sawed off by parties outside. When Jailer Curry took the chain gang out, Clifford, James, and Dan McDonald were let out of the cage to the corridor. They removed the sawed bars and Clifford and Dan McDonald went out through the hole. Sheriff Canutt pursued and ran the fugitive past the old depot to the crossing of the river on the fairgrounds road. When within 150 yards, the sheriff began shooting on the run. The first bullet kicked up the dirt between Clifford's feet, the second whistled past his leg, and the third was so close to the side of his head that it staggered him. Clifford gave up, claiming his heart had stopped beating from fear. Dan McDonald escaped and is believed to have boarded a train for Spokane.
“The first bullet kicked up the dirt between Clifford's feet and he went into the air like an antelope.”
Public safety and jail security remain perennial concerns for Colfax officials today, though the methods of both escape and pursuit have evolved drastically since 1900. The dramatic nature of this event reminds us that local legal battles often took place against a backdrop of frontier-style law enforcement.
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