The testimony of the defendant follows in full:
I didn’t go to school that day. I was sick, had a tumor on my neck and it was sore. I got up about 8 o’clock to go to school, but my neck was sore and I didn’t go to school. I laid back down and stayed in bed until about 11:30 and got up and dressed again to go outside. I went from home on down to the corner store on Daisy and Holly street to the North of my house. I stayed there, I guess, about three-quarters of an hour. I did not hear anyone at home. My mother was working at T??kel’s store. As I came back out of the store and started towards home I saw a laundry truck in front of Mrs. Hatch’s and Miss Pattie Hatch was sitting in it and Mr. King was on the right hand side of the truck and I spoke to Miss Hatch, but don’t suppose Mr. King saw me as he was on the opposite side of the truck from me.
I noticed a bicycle in front of my home standing against the gate and I came right across the drive way to the steps and thought I would go in the house—I decided some one was in the house and as I got to the door the door was locked. I opened the screen door but could not open the next door. I thought I heard scuffling and as I opened the screen door I heard a scuffle and a scream that appeared to come from inside the door right in mother’s bed room. I couldn’t tell whose voice it was—it sounded like a woman screaming; I thought it was mother but I didn’t know she had come home. I rushed around to the end window and put my head up to the shutters and couldn’t see in. I stopped there just a second and listened and I still heard the scuffling and screaming and I go around and jump over the fence, and my back window was open to my bed room and the back screen door was hooked and I climbed in the window, picked up my shot gun and rushed in the back porch, and just as I got to the hall door someone rushed out the front door and I followed, and just as I got in the hall Mother was standing there crying and holding her left hand and she said “He took advantage of me.” One of her fingers was skinned and dripping blood. It excited me so that I didn’t know half what happened, and just as I got to the side walk some one turned the corner on a bicycle and I went about half way to the corner and laid the shot gun down and rushed to the corner. I haven’t the least idea why I laid the shot gun down. I ran to the corner and just as I got there I see the man as he turns back, I see his face and know him.
I turned and came back to the house and put the shot gun inside the door and go and ask Mr. King to take me down town and he took me in front of the 414 N. John street, and I asked him to stop and this man was talking to a Syrian lady standing on the porch, and I motioned to the man to come there and he comes over and about the time he comes to the truck the lady in the porch calls the laundryman and Mr. King went to the porch to her and left me and Beshara at the truck. I said to him, “Will you go back home and make an explanation to me and mother why you were in the house?” and he said, “What do you mean?” And I said “Will you go?” and he said, “Sure I will go.”
Mr. King carried me back home on the truck and just as I got inside the house mother was still crying, tore all to pieces and frightened and I asked her what was the matter and she said he took advantage of her, and by that time this fellow rode up in front of the house on a bicycle and he stopped at the gate and I said, “What were you doing in the house?” and he cursed and said it was none of my ‘God damn business’ what he was doing in the house and I asked him again and he said it was none of my business and sneered. He was doing his shoulders like this and said it was none of my business and that he didn’t have to tell me anything. I walked back in the house and picked up the pistol out of papa’s trunk and as I got on the porch I kept asking him and he kept cursing me. He was cursing me all the time, some of it was English and some I didn’t know what he was saying and when I asked him again I had gotten off of the steps and he saw the pistol—I had it in my hand—He didn’t see the pistol until I got off the steps as he was looking at my face and when he saw the pistol it frightened him and he turned and ran down Daisy street to the corner and I ?? the street. I got on the bicycle then right behind him and he gained on me because I couldn’t hardly ride the bicycle with one hand and the pistol in the other, riding on the side walk. I turned the corner riding the bicycle with one hand and holding the pistol with the other. I rode up Beach going towards William street and he ran ahead of me. When he got to the corner he was 50 or 75 feet ahead of me and he turned going North and when I got to the side of the store I got off the bicycle and run to the corner and a lady was standing in front of the store and I said, “Where is he?” and she said there is not going to be any trouble” and I walked in the store. I asked her if she had any candy and she came in behind me and I heard a noise in the back of the store as I got about six feet inside and I saw this man, he walked out from the back partition into the front part. The lady walked out and left the store, and as he walked out I said, “Will you make an explanation to me and my Mother?” and he said “Sure,” and about that time he got even with me I turned to walk out with him and he grabbed me and was squeezing me up towards the counter. He had my left hand behind me and the right hand squeezed to my side. He was squeezing me up towards the counter and he had my back bent in so I couldn’t move and I said “Wait, wait” and he said “I will kill you, I will kill you.” I saw I couldn’t get loose and I pulled the trigger and shot and he turned me against the wall on the other side and he had me against that shelf against the wall and I couldn’t get loose, and this was done so quick, he rushed me to the door then and I couldn't get away from him no way. I tried to get away every way I could. One time I didn’t know what I was doing—I was hollering for him to turn me aloose. He bit me on the left shoulder and there was a large scar there. The print of his teeth stayed on there several days afterwards. My neck was still sore and when I turned my head it hurt and crushing me back it hurt still more and I didn’t know what to do, only to get him off, and it seemed he was almost killing me and I thought he was going to make out his threat when he kept right on. I don’t know when we got to the door, but anyway we went out the door and he pushed me clear across the side walk to the post and when I hit the post I shot again. He still had the hold on me and when he turned me aloose I jumped back out of the way from him and left. After I shot him the last time he fell and I went on home and it was just a short time before the police came after me.
From the front page of The Goldsboro News, Aug. 26, 1922. The story in the paper was printed a one very, very long paragraph. I’ve divided it to make it easier to read here. Also, I’ve used spelling from the original article, like aloose, side walk, some one, drive way, bed room, etc.
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