NEGRO LYNCHED IN AMERICA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14925, 24 February 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

NEGRO LYNCHED IN AMERICA.

Another, lynching took place in America on New Year's Day. The victim was Sam Turner, a negro, and his murder was the sequel to a drunken " joy ride" in which ho had indulged. Whilo in a state of intoxication Turner boarded a waiting locomotive which he found standing on a siding at Van Buren, Arkansas, and went for what is known as a " joy ride." He had crossed tho Arkansas-Oklahoma border before his escapade was discovered by the railway officials, but a ready-witted signalman, seeing the unauthorised engine tearing along the line at full speed, sidetracked it in order to prevent accidents. The locked points caused tho engine to fall down an embankment, but in some miraculous manner its drunken pilot escaped injury. Making his way across country, ho broko into a farmhouse and killed tho owner, George Caspn, with an axe. Ho also assaulted Mrs. Cason, and drank himself into a state of unconsciousness by finishing a bottle of whisky. The local police arrested him whilo ho was sleeping beside tho body of his victim, and conveyed him to gaol, but tho populace, on learning the details of the crime, decided to take the law into their own hands.

The governor of the gaol refused to give up his prisoner, and the mob stormed the building. Turner, wakened to a sense of his peril, was beaten insensible with hammers and farming implements, and his body was carried out in triumph and hanged to a tree, where it wae riddled with bullets.