Hoboes Start "Wild West"; Capture Train

1920

Hoboes Start "Wild West"

Deputies Have Exciting Chase After Seven Tramps Who Refuse to Pay Fare

LOS ANGELES, Neb. 25.—After a day of "Wild West" activity, started by the report that a gang of hobos had held up and "captured" a Southern Pacific freight train outside of Mojave, and a series of gun plays and thrilling automobile chases by officers, seven men were lodged in the county jail on the charge of evading railroad fare.

The seven were nabbed by deputy sheriffs after they left the freight train at Saugus. Three of the seven jumped from the train before it arrived at the station, and made a temporary escape by boarding a passing truck. They were chased by the officers to San Fernando, and there taken into custody at the point of sawed-off shotguns.

At least twenty men were in the gang when the brakeman of the train, W. S. Brown of Los Angeles, discovered them, he told Deputy Sheriffs Bell and Couts. Just before the train arrived in Saugus the majority of the gang, which included armed men, became suspicious of the reception that awaited them there, and boarded a freight train bound in the opposite direction.

The men refused to leave, and, when he threatened to put them off, offered resistance.

"You just try to put us off," one of the bunch called out, pulling a revolver from his pocket. Another gun was flashed, and then the brakeman was told that the train was "captured," and informed that he'd better go on to Los Angeles, the officers say.

An account of the situation was telegraphed to Los Angeles, and the Sheriff's office was notified, Deputies Couts and Bell were called from their homes and with Driver Arthur Cabbage were sent ahead to Saugus to meet the train.

The deputies nearly lost their prisoners when the county car, speeding toward Saugus, broke down a few miles from its destination. A passing automobile had to be commandeered, and the officers arrived in Saugus just in time to organize a posse.

With Constable Collins and the volunteers the officers "covered" the train when it pulled into the station, and told the men on it "to stick 'em up." Only four hobos came out of their hiding places, hands high up in the air. The officers realized that several had escaped, and soon learned that some of the gang boarded a truck a few miles outside of Saugus.

It was then that a second chase was started. The truck was overtaken near San Fernando and the three men on it taken into custody. The seven prisoners will be held for further investigation.

—The Evening State Journal and Lincoln Daily News, Lincoln, Nebraska, February 25, 1920, page 3.