Let off with a fine of $50 and costs for carrying a concealed weapon, Hiram Eason, Providence township farmers who had been charged with assault with deadly weapon with intent to kill, evidently failed to appreciate how lucky he was.
“I don’t feel like I have had any more chance than a dog,” Eason told one of his lawyers after he got outside the courtroom.
Eason later stated to a reporter that Mr. McPherson was shot with his own gun.
“McPherson struck at me twice,” Mr. Eason said, “and I struck at him the second time I knocked the pistol from his hand. Then McPherson took out his knife and started at me, and when he did I shot him with the pistol and threw it in the road.
Eason must have been sore because he was not put on the stand to tell his side of the affair. Bly taking the stand he might have got the prosecuting witness, O.A. McPherson, in some trouble, but also might have further incriminated himself. Certainly he could not have got by with a lesser charge than carrying a concealed weapon, and the fine imposed by the court was the minimum for this offense.
McPherson on the stand corroborated in most of the essential details the version of the shooting current on the bowery since last August. He testified that on August 26 he was returning with Marshall Jennings from a trip to look over some timber belonging to D.E. Williams and that as they came abreast of a lane leading to a certain negro’s house he saw a man in the distance whom he hailed. When the man stopped, McPherson said, he saw it was Eason, and, getting out of the automobile in which he and Jennings were riding, he bore down on Eason, saying, in effect:
“We might as well settle our little difficulty right now.”
McPherson testified that he then struck Eason with such a blow that his arm was sore for a longer period than his check was from the wound that he received from Eason’s gun, and that Eason then pulled a pistol out of his pocket, fired, and ran. McPherson then came to town with Jennings and had the wound that he had received in the cheek when Eason fired dressed.
McPherson’s failure to swear out a warrant against Eason was explained when the defense drew from him the admission that he himself had carried a gun at the time when he attacked Eason. Inasmuch as the only evidence against McPherson came from himself, however, and that when he had been put on the stand by the State, Prosecutor LeRoy did not press the charge against him.
From the front page of The Elizabeth City Daily Advance, Dec. 17, 1924
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92074042/1924-12-17/ed-1/seq-1/#words=DECEMBER+17.+1924
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