CONVICTS RIOT AND SEIZE GUARDS AS HOSTAGES

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 15, 5 October 1929, Page 7

CONVICTS RIOT AND SEIZE GUARDS AS HOSTAGES

PRSSOW MmGMAH MURDEFM&O LATER

FIVE DESPERATE MEN BARRICADED IN CELL. KILL HOSTAGES AND THEN THEMSELVES, NEW YORK, October 4.

A thousand convicts in the overcrowded State penitentiary at Cannon City (Florado), rioted and seized! at dozen guards and ex-Senator Colgate, who was visiting the prison, as hostages, holding them in the captured prison arsenal. The convicts warned! the warden that they would kill the hostages unless they were allowed their freedom, whereupon the warden refused. The prison hangman was murdered and the other hostages were in great danger. Four guards and from seven to nine convicts were killed.

The warden’s stenographer summoned the aid of the militia and fire police departments, thousands of armed volunteers also assisting in an endeavour to obtain control, but, due to the position of the hostages, the warden is unable to decide how to reply to the convicts’ threats. SELF-DESTRUCTION. {Received 10.30 a.m.) NEW YORK, Oct. 4. In the Cannon City gaol riot five murderous convicts barricade themselves in a cell and ended their war on society by the self-destruction of four of the five, after a. seventeenhours’ siege, during which they murdered, one by one, the five guards they held as hostages and callously tossed their bodies into the prison yard. Then 1 they stood before their leader and permitted] him to shoot them down.

The latter then executed the two remaining guards, after which he shot himself, causing the total loss of thirteen lives of which eight of the victims were guards. Eight other guards who were also kidnapped, were released at various times by their captors.—Australian P.A.