Running at a rate of speed estimated at 80 miles an hour or better, a white man, driving a Packard automobile, outdistanced a member of the local police in a race out Trent road and made his escape toward Pollocksville, carrying with him, it was believed, a cargo of Craven county corn last night.
Patrolman W.H. Ipock, dismayed by the daring of the Packard driver, gave an account of the race an hour or so later. He was the officer, and the chase was staged by a deputy sheriff’s Cadillac, the deputy being at the wheel, according to the patrolman.
A message was received by Patrolman Ipock late in the afternoon, to the effect that a negro would pass over Trent river bridge later in the evening with an automobile loaded with whiskey. The officer promptly summoned the deputy and they posted themselves at the foot of the bridge on South Front street.
A few minutes after 8 o’clock the Packard with a white man at the wheel and a negro seated beside him, rolled off the bridge and up George street. The officers rolled off behind him, and at Pollock turned up behind the Packard. The two cars ambled along at a moderate speed and finally the Cadillac passed the other, the officer calling to the other driver.
The Packard halted and the driver stepped out of his machine, walking back toward the officer. He said he was going to see a man in Ghent, naming the gentleman. But he never did reach the officer.
The patrolman turned to the deputy and said, “There’s something in that car, I believe.”
That was enough. The driver of the Packard climbed back into his car and “left there like a bird,” was the way Patrolman Ipock put it. The Cadillac was soon in pursuit, but in the race through Ghent it became apparent that the suspected rum runner had the edge. When the two cars reached Trent road, the deputy continued to stretch his throttle, but even when the big Cadillac was clipping it off at a rate that shifted from 60 to 65 miles an hour, he might as well have been tied to one of the telephone poles along the way. The Packard was eating up distance at the rate of 80 miles an hour or better, and in two minutes was out of sight.
Patrolman Ipoc and the deputy returned to the city, having given up all hope of glimpsing so much as the dust of the speeding rummer.
From the front page of The New Bernian, Sept. 26, 1923
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