By W.O. Saunders
One of the most cowardly and dastardly crimes ever committed against a weak and erring human came to light in Pasquotank County the other day when Davis Overton Jr., a 15-year-old colored youth was found famished, delirious and nearly dying from loss of blood in a ditch near his father’s home on Body Road four miles from this city. The boy had been shot in the back by a party of five men headed by Policeman George Twiddy, before sunrise on the morning of Sunday, April 2. A .32 calibre bullet hit the boy in the small of his back, just below the 12th rib, narrowly missed a kidney, penetrated his liver and right lung and lodged behind a rib in his chest.
And having left the boy wounded and at the point of death, Twiddy came back to town and said nothing about it. The boy after lying in the woods for four day, had managed to crawl back to the field near his home, more dead than alive. There his father found him near sundown Thursday, following the Sunday of the shooting. His father was away from home at the time of the shooting. The boy was taken to the Community Hospital by the County Health Officer Dr. Claud Wiliams and a skillful operation was performed by Dr. John Saliba. There was hope of a miraculous recovery for the boy when this was written.
And His Crime Was Vagrancy
Davis Overton was wanted on a charge of vagrancy and a warrant for vagrancy was held by Sheriff Chas. Reid. But Twiddy had no warrant for Davis Overton and no authority to go into Pasquotank County, three miles out of his jurisdiction. He says Sheriff Reid sent him. Sheriff Reid says Twiddy lies, that he did not send him for the Overton boy or authorize him to meddle in the case. But the important fact is incontrovertible: George Twiddy, armed with a murderous Smith & Wesson and accompanied by four other men, went on a man hunt between daybreak and sunrise of that glorious first Sunday in April. They found the boy in a shanty back from the road; the boy fled at the sight of such a posse of men coming upon him in the dawn. He fled and a volley of shot was fired after him. He was shot in the back, like a dog. An ignorant, simple-minded, kindly disposed little negro, wanted by the county authorities for vagrancy, hunted at daybreak by a posse of five men led by a big, brutal, cowardly city policeman and shot down like a desperado upon whose head was a price! Why Such a Posse?
The men who accompanied Twiddy on this man hunt were Deputy Sheriff Horation Seymour of Camden County; Ralph Cuthrell and Linwood Cartwright, two young men who are neighbors of Sheriff Seymour; and Pete Sawyer, a young white man who was recently mixed up in the theft of a box of tools and who is a friend of Twiddy’s. How a Camden County Deputy sheriff and his neighbors came to be hooked up with George Twiddy is explained by Sheriff Seymour who says he came to town Saturday night, April 1, at look for a young man named Hettrick who was wanted for a theft in Camden. With Sheriff Reid’s permission Seymour had hunted Hettrick unsuccessfully until nearly daybreak, when he decided to go home. Twiddy had been with him on the hunt for Hettrick.
Having given up the hunt for Hettrick, Twiddy asked Sheriff Seymour and his friends to go with him into the country to get the Overton boy. The Camden men piled into a car with Twiddy and Pete Sawyer. And that’s how a deputy sheriff and two other men from another county came to be in the dastardly business.
As Others Tell the Story
Twiddy says he did not shoot the negro. No one may know who did shoot him. Sheriff Seymour says that Twiddy fired several times at the negro when he ran, but the negro outran him. Twiddy is fat leisurely and easily winded in a race. Ralph Cuthrell, young, vigorous, sinewly told Twiddy he could get the negro if he had a gun. Twiddy handed his gun to Cuthrell and Cuthrell led the pursuit. This is the story Seymour tells. It is corroborated by the Overton boy who says that the man who shot him was a young man, dressed in a suit of gray clothes. Cuthrell wore a suit of gray at the time.
Sheriff Seymour says both Twiddy and Cuthrell fired upon the negro, but that neither he nor any of his party had a gun or rifle. Seymour says Twiddy’s was the only gun in the crowd. There are conflicting reports of the number of shots fired. Seymour says six shots. Gilbert Godfrey, a Body Road farmer who was an eye witness to the chase, says he heard what seemed to him to be 15 or 16 shots. Others say there were as many as 20 shots. Some say only five shots were fired. The bark of a pistol at daybreak on a peaceful Sabbath in the country is a shock which paralyzes the imagination of serene country people. No one knows just how many shots were fired. But there are persistent reports that the whole party was armed and that more than one gun was used. But, whether one or 100 shots were fired, the damned fact is not whipped out: that a poor little defenseless colored boy was routed out of a shanty at daybreak and shot down like a dog to die, to satisfy the sleuthing enterprise of a big, hulking, cowardly policeman armed with a club and a Smith & Wesson. As I write this Twiddy is still walking the streets of Elizabeth City swinging his club, with his murderous gun stuck in his hip pocket. And the Mayor, the City Manager, the Board of Aldermen—no one except the County Prosecuting Attorney Phil Sawyer—are making no move to bring him to book or take his gun and uniform away from him. This may be the second notch in Twiddy’s gun. It was just last Christmas Eve that this same Twiddy killed a negro in a raid on a house in Harney Street. I investigated that shooting and assert that Twiddy’s shooting on that occasion was cowardly, inexcusable and indefensible. But he only shot a negro; his white skin saved him a white man’s tribunal; but I wouldn’t give the scent in his socks for his chances of acquittal before the throne of that high court above where even a negro can get simple justice and white skins will not justify acts of cowardice and brutality.
The Story of the Little Negro
I have spared no pains to get at the exact facts in this case. Davis Overton, the victim of Twiddy’s folly is just an illiterate, simple-minded little country negro, dragged up by a tenant-cropper father in a family of seven or eight. The boy strayed away from home about a year ago under the influence of an older negro and became involved in a number of petty misdemeanors. He is suspected of the theft of a suit of clothes and of stealing a few chickens and other things. The white people who knew him never looked upon him as a vicious or evilly disposed kind.
Recently the boy became alarmed over his own conduct, and homesick at the same time. He wanted to go back to his father’s place. But he was afraid of his father. He got as near to the old home as he could and kept himself concealed in a deserted house by day. At night he would venture forth and prowl around the neighborhood. It is suspected that his mother slipped him some food to eat and that he got other food by preying upon henhouses and potato banks in the neighborhood. He had a live chicken smothered in a bag when Twiddy’s posse came upon him that Sunday morning.
Gilbert Godfrey had seen the boy prowling about the neighborhood at late hours of the night and reported him to Sheriff Reid. Mr. Godfrey suspected the boy of petty thieveries and thought he should be taken up. Sheriff Reid procured a warrant charging the boy with vagrancy. Sheriff Reid went once to the house to take the boy, but the boy was absent. Twiddy knew that Sheriff Reid wanted the boy. Twiddy thought he would eat the sheriff to it and put a feather in his own helmit. Sheriff Reid was making no particular hurry about taking the boy, sure that he could pick him up any time. Chas. Reid is familiar with the Overton boy’s type; he has arrested hundred like him. And be it said to the credit of Reid that in all his career as sheriff of this county for many years, dealing with all sorts of criminals, he never shot a man.
But Twiddy likes to shoot. Shooting negroes is a safe sport for a policeman who has had his head beaten up by men of his own race. There was plenty for Twiddy to do in town that Saturday night. Prostitutes were walking the streets soliciting men. Gambling was going on in the usual resorts. Jitney drivers were hauling immoral boys and women about. Bootleggers were plying their trade as usual, and a trained nose might have detected a distillery going anywhere on the edge of town. But Twiddy couldn’t make a record involving the capture of wits greater than his own. His meat is a witless negro and he happened to know that a witless negro youth was wanted in the County. He knew where to find this negro youth and he had four big, fearless white men go to along with him and support him in his man hunt.
Sawyer Promises to Prosecute
Phil Sawyer, Prosecuting Attorney for the County, says he will show Twiddy and his companions no quarter, prosecuting them to the full extent of the law. This newspaper will support Mr. Sawyer in his prosecution and will insist that the Board of Aldermen of Elizabeth City immediately divest Twiddy of his uniform. He is a dangerous man in the community and a city that continues him or his kind in its employ should hang its head in shame. It will only be a question of time, if Twiddy is retained, before he will shoot the wrong man and involve the corporation of Elizabeth City in a civil action which might cost it the price of public utilities.
From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, April 14, 1922
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