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Thursday, June 9, 2022

Five White Men Face Felonious Charges of Shooting With Intent to Kill Negro Boy, JUne 9, 1922

Five White Men Held for Court. . . Charged With Felonious Shooting With Intent to Kill Negro Boy

More than two months after the crime was committed, Geo. W. Twiddy and four alleged accomplices charged with feloniously shooting with intent to kill Davis Overton, a 15-year-old negro boy, were given a preliminary hearing in the County Court Tuesday morning, June 6. Upon the evidence submitted the five men were bound over to the Superior Court under bonds of $250 each.

The five depends(?) so bound are Geo. W. Twiddy, a member of the Elizabeth City police force; Horatio Seymour, deputy sheriff of Camden County; Ralph Cuthrell and Linwood Cartwright, Camden County men; and L.T. Sawyer, known about town as Pete Sawyer. Without warrant or authority Twiddy took four men on a man hunt in Pasquotank County, several miles from the city limits, before sun-up of the morning of Sunday, April 2. Twiddy was looking for a half-witted negro boy wanted on a charge of vagrancy by the county authoritie and suspected of various petty thieveries. Sheriff Chas. Reid swore at the hearing Tuesday morning that he had not given a warrant to Twiddy or any of the other men, nor deputized any one to arrest the negro.

The boy was found in a vacant house on the Parker farm about three miles from town. He ran when the fine men in an automobile came upon him. He was pursued and many shots were fired at him. Eye witnesses to the shooting were not placed on the stand at Tuesday’s hearing.

Twiddy and his army came back to town without their victim, and Twiddy made no report of the shooting to Sheriff Reid or anybody else in authority. Four days later the negro boy was picked up more dead than alive. A 32 calibre bullet fired into his back had plowed an oblique course thru his back from a point near the 12th rib, thru the diaphragm, liver and left lung, lodging in his breast near the sixth rib. After seven weeks in the hospital under the treatment of Dr. John Saliba, the negro is up and about but is weak and still suffering great pain. The negro was wracked with pain and in a dazed condition while undergoing examination in court Tuesday.

Davis Overton Jr., the negro boy in the case, is a half-witted, irresponsible youth, who should have been committed to an asylum earlier in life. The shooting down of such a type by a big hulk of a policeman or any one else is a crime of such a revolting nature as to have sickened everybody with soul for justice. It has not sickened the Chief of Police of Elizabeth city, the City Manager, or the Board of Aldermen who are responsible for Twiddy’s conduct as a police officer. He has never been suspended from the police force for the shooting, and the city authorities have not lifted a finger to investigate the charges against him, say nothing of assisting in the prosecution. In arguing the case in the County Court Tuesday morning, the County Prosecutor, P.G. Sawyer, castigated the city authorities in nearly violent language. Mr. Sawyer also made the statement that if the victim of the shooting had been a white man, shot down by so many negroes, there would have been a lynching. The astounding indifference of the city authorities and the continuation of Twiddy on the city police force defies explanation.

From page 5 of The Independent, Elizabeth City, June 9, 1922

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