A Domestic Tragedy in Mount Pleasant
A husband's rage turns fatal when a neighbor intervenes to protect his wife and children.
At Mount Pleasant, a village near this city, a terrible tragedy was enacted today. G. Gerritti, an Italian, was beating his wife when his brother, H. Gerritti, and Dan C. Colbourne, a well-known insurance agent of this city, interfered in the woman's behalf. She and her four little children escaped from the infuriated husband. Incensed at the interference, Gerritti crept up behind Colbourne and fired three shots at him, one of the balls lodging in the spine and inflicting what is thought to be a fatal wound. After the shooting of Colbourne, Gerritti fled to his house, about a quarter of a mile distant, pursued by the town marshal and a posse. He locked himself up in his house, and the posse, being unarmed, defied them to arrest him. While his pursuers were deliberating, Gerritti placed the muzzle of a pistol in his mouth and blew out his brains.
“Gerritti placed the muzzle of a pistol in his mouth and blew out his brains.”
Domestic violence intervention has long been a fraught and dangerous civic responsibility in the Pacific Northwest. This 1885 account of a neighbor attempting to protect a family mirrors the ongoing, complex discussions in modern Seattle about public safety and the limits of community intervention in private domestic crises.
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