Charges Dropped After Transport Ship Departs
A sailor’s violent dispute over missing money on an Army transport ends without a trial as witnesses set sail.
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.
At the request of the prosecuting attorney, August Shriner, the sailor who has been held at the county jail on the charge of assaulting an officer of the United States army transport Dix with a deadly weapon, has been released. It was at first claimed that Shriner was insane when he made the attack upon his superior, but the man claimed that the cause of the shooting was that he had intrusted his money with the officer, who denied having it when Shriner asked for it. Since the examination as to Shriner's sanity, the transport has left Tacoma, taking all the witnesses, and the officers here, feeling that the officers on the transport did not care to prosecute the case after the revelation made by Shriner, have liberated the latter. The shooting occurred about two months ago while the Dix was in Tacoma harbor.
“The man claimed that the cause of the shooting was that he had intrusted his money with the officer, who denied having it when Shriner asked for it.”
This case illustrates the blurred lines of jurisdiction and accountability when maritime military operations intersect with local civilian law enforcement, a recurring point of friction in port cities like Tacoma.
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