West Palm Beach, Fla., Jan. 28—Three youths were killed and five others were injured near here early today when one of them fired a shot into sticks of dynamite which had been placed for safe keeping in a knapsack hanging from a Palmetto tree. They were on a hiking trip at the time.
The dead are Lawrence Haworth, 14; Robert Lincoln, 14; and Martin Feuse, 14. The injured, Pal Nichols, 14; Orson Morgan, 15; Thomas Matthewson, 17; Lewis Hall, 16; and Lawrence Clinging, 12. Matthewson is the only one of those injured believed to be in serious condition. All of the dead and injured are residents of Palm Beach county.
Those comprising the “hiking” party were the nucleus of a scout troop, which they expected to organize in their neighborhood.
Lawrence Clinging, the only one of those injured able to talk tonight, said the boys found the dynamite under a house near where they pitched camp last night. They took out several sticks with the intention of taking them home to use in blasting out stumps on tier farms and hung the rest in the palmetto tree.
Early this morning, young Clinging said, as the boys were sitting around the campfire, Haworth fired his pistol apparently, Clinging thought, into the air.
“Everything happened so quickly that I could not tell where the shot went. All I know is I saw red.” Sometime later, Nichols, although desperately injured, made his way three miles down a sandy road to a settlement and notified the boys’ families. Doctors and ambulances were immediately rushed to the scene.
From the Durham Morning Herald, Jan. 28, 1923
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