Fiendish Mexicans Slug American Boy

1919

BANDIT ASSAULTS HIM WITH CLUB AFTER ROBBERY.

Victim Tells of His Escape After Three Days of Torture in a Lonely Shack.

DENVER, Colo. — After three days of terror in the custody of two Mexican bandits, who on the third day slugged and robbed him and left him for dead, Granville Coster, 18-year-old Denver boy who disappeared recently from Allison, N. M., has turned up alive at the office of the Allison Coal Company, by which he was employed as a truck driver, according to word received by his mother, Mrs. William Coster, of this city.

Five hundred and twenty dollars, which he was taking to Gallup for deposit in the Gallup State Bank, was taken from him by the bandits. According to his story, he reached Gallup and was driving his delivery truck into the suburbs when two Mexicans sprang from the side of the road into the truck, jerked the curtains down, drew their guns and ordered him to drive according to their direction. He was compelled to drive across the Arizona border, fifteen miles away.

"Just over the line we came to a farm house," said Coster. "The Mexicans told me if I made a sound they would kill me. We got out of the truck, and they made me walk the whole distance to Winslow, more than 100 miles. We arrived there the morning of the third day.

"They took me into an old shack on the outskirts of the town. They had already taken the money from me. One of them grabbed a club from the floor and struck me over the head with it. That's all I know."

The boy did not regain consciousness until evening. He staggered into Winslow, where he fortunately found friends, who supplied him with enough money to return to Allison. The bandits took everything from him except a bunch of keys, he said.

Coster has been employed driving a delivery truck from Allison to Gallup three times a week. The day before he was kidnaped he carried $5,000 to the Gallup bank.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 7.