Sunday, August 4, 2019

Deputy Sheriff Lloyd Cloninger Shot, Aug. 4, 1919

From the Hickory Daily Record, Aug. 4, 1919

Deputy Cloninger of Iredell County Shot

Statesville, Aug. 4—Deputy Sheriff Lloyd Cloninger of Mooresville, this county, last afternoon at 4 o’clock was shot and, it is believed, mortally wounded while trying to arrest Conner, a notorious negro near the negro camp meeting grounds at Morris school house.

Trouble had been brewing there since Saturday and yesterday afternoon the officers were notified of drunken orgies and shooting scrapes going on in the woods back of the camp meeting grounds. Lloyd Cloninger, Chief of Police Furr and Assistant Brown left for the scene of the shooting. Cloninger, on arriving, went towards Conner, for whom he had a warrant, but the negro ordered the officer back, at the same moment producing his gun and firing at the officers, burning Cloninger’s coat sleeve with the first shot. Cloninger then fired twice and the negro turned and ran, falling about 150 yards away with two bullets in him. At this moment another, as yet unidentified, negro ran up, shooting Cloninger in the back, the bullet passing clear through the body. When the officer whirled around to face his new antagonist he was shot again in the chest, right over the heart. Shooting then became general, fully 50 shots being fired before friends could place Deputy Cloninger in a car and rush him her to the hospital, where small hope is held out for his recovery.

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