ATTEMPT TO LYNCH MURDERERS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3602, 27 January 1883, Page 4

ATTEMPT TO LYNCH MURDERERS.

Kentucky recently furnised a characteristic story of lawlessness and bloodshed, resulting in the Mlling of six persons and the woundhig of between twenty and thirty. Three niffians, named Neal, Craft, and England, were recently convicted of a brutal triple murder. They had committed a horrible crime on young girls. Neal and Craft were sentenced to death ; England to penal servitude for life. A new trial was, however, granted in another county adjoining that in which the first hearing had been held. Meanwhile an enragedmob got England into their power and promptly lynched him. The other two murderers were afterwards removed from Catletsbury to Lexington for their new trial. So great was the popular indignation against the murderers that it was deemed necessary to provide an escort of 200 State troops and a section of artillery. The commander of the escort, learning that it had been arranged to tear np the railway track, decided to take the prisoners by steamboat route. The mob, after seizing the railway train at Ashland, want to Catletsbury, where they found two companies with artillery guarding the approaches to the river and the wharf. They demanded that the prisoners should be handed over to them ; but this was refused, and the steamer Granite State started. At Ashland, however, a mob seized a ferry boat and stood out to intercept them. The Granite State, upon this, steamed round the ferry boat. A boy on the latter fired a pistol shot. Hereupon the troops returned fire upon the ferry boat with fatal effect. The bullets pierced the ferry boat's boiler, and the escaping steam demoralised the mob, who withdrew with one killed and several wounded, the battle having been pretty hot for a few minutes. The worst part of the story has yet to be told. The troops became excited, and whilst the ferry boat was withdrawing they continued to fire, the shots passing in many cases over the ferry boat on to the shore, where they fell with fatal effect amongst the inoffensive spectators on the bank. Five of these were, in fact, killed, and nearly a score wounded; amongst the former being a woman who Avas carrying an infant, and whose brains were dashed out by a stray bullet. A colonel was amongst those killed. In the midst of all the excitement consequent upon such a scene, a runaway team of horses dashed suddenly into struggling mass of citizens ashore who, fleeing from the shots of the troops, were knocked down by the horses, altogetherpresentin'g a frightful spectacle of confusion. The prisoners were then got off to Lexington without further molestation. Great indignation prevailed, as it was alleged that the murderers were in no danger, and nobody need have been injured had not the militia become demoralised.