Carl Lippard, 19, Cannot Recall Who He Was With When He Was Shot, May 7, 1922

Lippard Affair Still a Mystery. . . Man Shot by Unknown Parties Can’t Recall Companion’s Name

The mystery of the shooting of Carl Lippard, 19-year-old youth of Catawba county, who was brought to St. Peter’s Hospital before dawn Saturday morning with a bullet in his back fired by unknown parties as he and a companion sped from Charlotte toward Catawba county, is still unsolved. No light was thrown Saturday on the affair by any officers of either the city or the county or young Lippard himself.

Bud Lippard, father of the boy, and his mother and two sisters came to Charlotte Saturday to see Carl at the hospital. He was moved about noon from St. Peter’s Hospital to the Mercy Hospital, as he was a patient of Dr. Wylie Moore, whose patients are usually taken to the latter hospital. The condition of the patient was reported as satisfactory and he is expected to recover without difficulty.

Young Lippard still had not recalled Saturday night who his companion was in the car when he was shot as their car passed a Studebaker car standing diagonally across the road near Odell King’s home on the Beatty’s Ford road about 4 o’clock Saturday morning. At the hospital Saturday morning he apparently made an effort to recall the name, but could not, saying it was a boy whom he knew only slightly and whom he was making the trip back to his home in Catawba county. He said if he was able to recall his companion’s name later in the day he would do so. Saturday night he said he was still unable to recall the name. There was still no proof Saturday night that the parties who fired at young Lippard and sent a 45-caliber pistol ball not his back were the same parties who accosted Deputy Sheriff Vic Fesperman and Rural Policeman Howard Wilson and Louis Johnson as they were returning on the Beatty’s Ford road to Charlotte after an all-night search for parties supposed to have been connected with the still that was found near Gilead church Thursday night. But several circumstances seem to indicate that the parties must have been the same.

The members of the sheriff’s party say they recognized two men of the group that first hailed them as they passed also a few minutes later when an automobile coming toward Charlotte stopped and came out to where the officers’ car had been drawn up in the shadow of the Kennedy pines to await the passing of an automobile they were expecting in connection with their hunt for the operator of the still found Thursday night. In both cases the parties drew back and apologized when they saw it was the sheriff’s party. The sheriff’s officers would not divulge for publication the names of the two men they say they recognized.

There was so much driving back and forth by heavy automobiles full of men on the Beatty’s Ford road, according to one of the sheriff’s party, that they were somewhat impeded I their carefully laid plans to arrest parties they suspected in connection with the Gilead still.

From The Charlotte News, May 7, 1922