A TRAIN CAPTURED BY A MANIAC. Chicago, 31st May.

Evening Post, Volume XXX, Issue 22, 25 July 1885, Page 1 (Supplement)

A TRAIN CAPTURED BY A MANIAC. Chicago, 31st May.

Shortly before noon to-day the station policeman at the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Depot on Polkstreet, received the following de^ spatch : — Chicago (111.), 31st May, 1885. | I have an insane man on my train who has possession of one car. The police at Kansas City, Jacksonville, and Peoria were all afraid to take him. Please send ten or twelve policemen out on No. 10 to take him when we arrive in Chicago. They had better come in citizen's clothes. They will have to look sharp or some one will get hurt. ' ' Putnam, Conductor ofcNo. 6. No. 6, which left Kansas City last night was due here' at 2.50 p.m. There was difficuly on starting out No. 10, as directed in the dispatch, an 4it was to meet the train at the depot, Eight uniformed policemen and four in citizens' clothes, under command of Lieutenant Laugh, made up the squad, which arrived at the depot ten minutes before the train was due. The train being delayed,' as was subsequently learned, by ineffectual attempts to capture the lunatic, the police were forced to wait more than an hour. After considerable anxious speculation as to the condition of things on board No. 6, the officers were finally anything V>ut reassured by a dispatch from a suburban station warning that the maniac was well armed and would resist desperately. A little later No. 6 appeared in sight, and the police, separating, so as to form two squares, ' waited on either side of the track for the arrival of the train. ''As the train approached, the whißtle sounded a number of warning noises in quick succession. People hanging half-way out of the car windows were seen to gesticulate wildly to the crowd. Before the train had come to a standstill a dozen passengers jumped to the ground and fled, looking back with blanched faces Officer Barrett was the first to observe the luuatic. Barrett was standing near the rear end of the smoking-car. The madman, with a levelled revolver, glared at him from the front platform of the chair car, ( the length of one car distant. Barrett turned half round' and fired instantly, but too late. A ball from the lunatic's revolver struck him in the side, and in five minutes he was dead One look at the manaie was enough to satisfy anyone that while his ammunition lasted he would not be taken alive. Seeing this, the officers, after removing their dead comrade, began^a fusilade through the windows of the smoking-car, where the madman had taken refuge. After a minute or two, he plunged out on to the platform, and fired a couple of shots into the crowd, leaped from the train, and dashed down Fourth Avenue Officer Laughlin started in hot pursuit, and at him the lunatic fired the last' shot in his weapon, but without effect. The maniac slopped and waited Laughlin's coming with gleaming eyes and frothing mouth. They clinched, and the officer tripped his prisoner, and they both fell, the madman beating Laughlin on his head with his revolver. The officer was in citizen's clothes, and was set upon and terribly pounded by an excited coloured man, who mistook him for the prisoner. The rest of the squad arrived shortly, and the maniac was secured. He was taken first to a cell, and then to the Hospital, to have his wounds dressed. When he realised that further resistance was useless, the 'prisoner grew calm, and said quite rationally, that his name was Louis Reaume, that he was 33 years old, and was en route to his home from Denver. The train men of No. 6 tell a thrilling story of the trip from Kansas city. When the ' man boarded the train at that place, he remarked that people were after him to lynch him, and that if left alone he would molest no one. At El Paso, 111 , he became violent, and, with revolver in hand, ordered the train men to cease making some changes in the make-up of the train. The passengers all left the chair car, which the-madmau made his headquarters, and were locked up into the. others. No one dared approach the lunatic, and after he had exchanged several shots with the city marshal he ordered the train to proceed, and from there to Chicago his will was the only law obeyed. Since his wounds have been dressed Reaame has become somewhat more communicative. He says he is a French Canadian by birth, and a fresco painter by trade, and has a wife and three children at Detroit He wore a white sombrero, and, as he ran down Fourth -Avenue, w^ thought by the residents to be a cowboy on a spree As the train on which the madman arrived was passing slowly through the outskirts of the city, a man by the name of Spruck jumped aboard the platform where the maniac

stood. He immediately blazpd away with his revolver, the ball jusc grazing Spruek's chin and taking a button from his coat. Spruck stepped off and waited for another train.