Vigilante Justice in Walla Walla
After A. J. Hunt shot a cavalry soldier, a mob of soldiers stormed the Walla Walla county jail and executed the prisoner.
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.
A. J. Hunt, a Walla Walla gambler, aged 66 years, shot Private Miller, of the Second cavalry, stationed at that place, on Wednesday, April 22. The shooting does not seem to have had the least justification, and Thursday night, when it was reported that Miller could not live, a body of soldiers went to the county jail and forced the sheriff to give up Hunt, who was taken into the court house yard and shot to death, there being sixteen bullet holes in his body. The affair was systematically managed, the telephone wires to the garrison being cut and armed sentries stationed all around to prevent the interference of citizens.
“The sheriff had six deputies with him guarding the prisoner, but the soldiers had battering tools and threatened to blow the building up with dynamite.”
This accounts for the brutal reality of vigilante justice in the late 19th century, where institutional law often collapsed in the face of mob violence. It serves as a stark reminder of how thin the veneer of civic order was in frontier-era Washington towns like Walla Walla.
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