LEAP TO DEATH.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20960, 25 February 1930, Page 11

LEAP TO DEATH.

RUM CREW DROWNED. DESPERATE TRY TO ESCAPE. Four members of three rum-running boats were drowned in the Detroit River, into which they plunged to escape arrest by Customs border patrolmen. Two other -members of the crew were rescued from the river by the inspectors, who. also seized the smuggler’s boat, with a cargo of liquor valued at more than £6OOO. The seizure was made about ISO feet off Wyandotte. The officers had stopped the three boats coming from the Canadian shore. As they drew alongside the four men jumped into the river and struck out for a fourth boat. This craft, according to the officers, was capsized by the combined efforts of the four men to climb aboard. The two original occupants of the fourth boat were taken aboard the Customs patrol boat. Rival Detroit and Buffalo liquor running gangs were declared by Federal agents.to be engaged in a war to the death for control of the Ontario liquor output. , C. M. Cramer, special investigator of the Treasury Department, has been assigned to look into the situation, which, already has resulted in the murder of one Detroit -liquor smuggler and the disappearance of three others. The war started with the descent upon the Ontario ports of Bridgeburg, Port Colborne and Forte Erie of a gang of Detroit smugglers who proceeded, with offers of higher wages, to lure away some of the Buffalo gangs’ best liquor traffickers, • One result of the war between the two gangs has been a decrease in the amount of smuggled liquor,. as crossing the -Niagara River has been made more hazardous, with smugglers forced to evade their rivals in addition to the coastguard and the ice fioeq, Rum-running operations have been somewhat curbed also by the fatal shooting of Etlgene F. Downey, jun,, by coastguards.