The Knife Wounds on the Railroad Tracks
A man called Downey told police two strangers attacked him. Officers suspected he had been selling liquor to Native people—and that a fight over the illicit trade had turned violent.
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 man giving his name as Downey was taken in charge by the police Sunday night. He was drunk and bleeding freely from four knife wounds in shoulder and arm. He told an improbable story about being assaulted by two men while walking on the track between the old town and North Yakima. He claimed the wounds were made by a sharp rock, and that he had never been in the city before, but the officers say that they had been spotting him for a week previous, under the belief that he was selling liquor to Indians, and the impression is that while engaged in this nefarious work he got into a fight with the Indians and was stabbed. Dr. Coe sewed up the wounds, which were ugly flesh cuts but not of a serious nature.
“He claimed the wounds were made by a sharp rock ... but the officers say that they had been spotting him for a week previous.”
This brief is a reminder that vice enforcement in Yakima was never separate from racialized suspicion and the railroad corridor. Downey’s story and the officers’ theory never quite meet, leaving a small violent mystery in the margins of the town’s liquor economy.
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