Just before Sheriff Hugh Logan fell asleep Monday night, he heard a suspicious sound overhead in the jail and shortly thereafter a suspicious thud and footsteps on the tin roof of the county bastille. Hurriedly he donned a few garments and ran out of the house and up the gangway of the new jail structure where he could see the roof of the old jail. There in a corner huddled a dark form and over the edge some blankets. However, the officer’s yell at the prisoner sent him scurrying back with his blankets to the interior of the jail, where when Sheriff Logan arrived he was already on his cot. The prisoner who attempted to escape proved to be Ben Stubbs, 15-year-old youth of Shelby, who was awaiting his departure to the Jackson Training School following his conviction on a number of charges. Stubbs crawled through a hole in the roof of the old jail that has been there, Sheriff Logan says, for years. Had not the discovery been made when it was, it is likely that Stubbs would have made his getaway and probably other prisoners.
The youth was taken to the reformatory Tuesday by Welfare Officer J.B. Smith and placed in the custody of officials of the training school. Enroute there, Mr. Smith says, the boy told him several tales regarding the attempted escape. One of the revelations had it that some of the prisoners had in some manner secured one or two hacksaws and that they had urged him after he reached freedom to saw the big locks on the main outside door and let all those incarcerated escape This, he told Mr. Smith, he refused to do. How much, or what part, if any, of his story is true is not known, and officers say that the hacksaw if brought into use would have to be plied with energy for a number of hours before the lock could be sawed in two. Needless to say, the completion of the new jail will be welcomed—by the law.
From the front page of The Cleveland Star, Shelby, N.C., Jan. 16, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn97064509/1925-01-16/ed-1/seq-1/
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