The Price of a Walk Home
When a Seattle man chased off two strangers bothering his daughter, he found himself in the middle of an expensive legal standoff.
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.
It will be remembered that an item was published about three weeks ago, stating that two young men had followed Mr. Lyman's daughter home and acted in a manner which created the suspicion that they had no good purpose in view, and that he caught one of the men, gave him a beating, and locked him up in jail for the night. This was on September 26th. Yesterday, Mr. Lyman was served with papers stating in substance that one J.W. Squibbs claimed $1,000 damages for being violently assaulted, beaten, and wounded by Mr. Lyman.
A reporter called on Mr. Lyman and obtained his side of the story, which is that on the night mentioned, his daughter, accompanied by a young man named Goodman, was followed by two men—Mr. Squibbs and a man named Pompilio. The two men met the girl and boy on Fifth street and would not give them room to pass on the sidewalk. They therefore went off the walk and passed around the men. After passing, they discovered they were being followed, and when they reached the gate at home, the men passed them and then came back and stood near the fence. Mr. Lyman was in bed but was called up by his daughter, who told him she had been followed. He took a small pistol and went out to where the men stood, one of whom ran away. He hit the man who remained on the head with the pistol, breaking his nose and scarring him up considerably, then turned him over to an officer who lodged him in jail. Mr. Squibbs says that he had no intention of scaring the girl, but was looking for a man by the name of Joe Dana, whom he had engaged the day before to ride a race at Whiteburg, and thought the young man with the girl was he.
“He took a small pistol and went out to where the men stood, one of whom ran away. He hit the man who remained on the head with the pistol.”
Public safety, 'street harassment,' and the volatile intersection of protective parental instinct and legal liability remain a constant in Seattle life. While the weapons and legal stakes have changed, the tension of navigating public space in an expanding city feels hauntingly familiar.
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