Youths Arrested for Binding Boy Near Interurban Bridge
Two teens were taken into custody after a game of 'play' left a younger boy tied to a structure near the Puyallup River for several hours.
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.
Carl Clut and John Valinda, two boys, aged 16 and 17 years, respectively, were arrested yesterday on warrants charging them with assault and battery on the person of Willie Furmeister, a boy 13 years of age. The alleged offense committed by Clut and Valinda was the tying of the Furmeister boy with straps, and then leaving him bound near the Interurban bridge. Clut and Valinda claim, however, that they, with several other boys, were playing along the Puyallup River, and in the course of the afternoon they tied the Furmeister boy with a book-strap. When the boys were ready to go home the offended lad refused to allow his companions to take the strap off, and stubbornly remained behind, where he was found several hours later by a searching party. It is said that the strap used was only a light strap. The boy's hands were not tied and Clut declares that Furmeister might have released himself had he wished to do so.
“When the boys were ready to go home the offended lad refused to allow his companions to take the strap off, and stubbornly remained behind.”
While framed as a 'playful' incident by the accused, the legal system's intervention highlights the era's changing attitudes toward juvenile delinquency and the responsibility older children held for younger ones in public spaces like the Puyallup River corridor.
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