Street Duel Leaves Bystander Wounded
A card game dispute between a gambler and a bartender escalated into a nine-shot exchange on a Prosser street.
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.
PROSSER, Wash., May 18—Will Hayes, a gambler, and Bob Wilson, a bartender, had a pistol duel on the street here at 7 o'clock last evening, emptying their revolvers at each other. Nine shots were fired. Wilson was shot twice in the arm, but Hayes was not hit. Fred Page, a bystander, was shot in the hip, but the wound is not considered dangerous. Hayes and Wilson, it is understood, had trouble over a card game, which led to the shooting. Both are under arrest.
“Hayes and Wilson, it is understood, had trouble over a card game, which led to the shooting.”
Public shootouts over minor disputes were a common, violent feature of early 20th-century frontier towns, where law enforcement was often reactive rather than preventative. Today, Prosser is a quiet center of Washington’s wine country, a stark contrast to the era when saloon-based violence defined the town's social life.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.