Does Thomas Skinner Mann Jr., age 25, an automobile mechanic of this city who was mysteriously shot and seriously wounded after midnight Sunday on the Newland Road five miles from this city know who shot him? Both county and city officials incline to the theory that young Mann can clear up the mystery of his shooting when he wills.
Young Mann was found in his Ford coupe near Berea Baptist Church about five miles from Elizabeth City at 12:30 o’clock Sunday night, crazed with pain from a bullet wound. He had been shot in the abdomen.
The bullet pierced his left lung, passing thru the cardiac end of his stomach, narrowly missed the apex of his heart, and lodged in the flesh of his left side, just under the arm pit, an X-Ray examination at the Elizabeth City Hospital later revealed.
Mann was found in his automobile by Bruce McPherson and a young man named Brothers. After losing some time in trying to get a doctor, they brought him to town and to the hospital. Mann told them he did not know who shot him.
Mann Doesn’t Want to be Questioned
Mann was never in an unconscious condition, although weak from shock and pain. At the hospital Mann again and again declared that he didn’t know who shot him, and each time he has implored his questioners not to ask him any more questions. On Tuesday he requested that no one else be permitted to see him or question him for 10 days.
His brother, Walter Mann, of Norfolk, Va., who hurried to his bedside Monday morning and who went back to Norfolk Wednesday night, made a parting request that no one be permitted to ask is brother about the shooting until he returned from Norfolk next week. Walter Mann indicated that he might have something to tell when he came back.
It all looks funny. Tommie Mann, as young Mann is popularly known, told a well connected and plausible story to the police. He had visited Miss Ruth Overman, a daughter of Dennis Overman Sr., near Berea Church, Sunday night. He said they had gone riding together, and had gone as far as South Mills, eight miles distance and had a Coca Cola. Returning to the Overman home he found he had a flat tire and rode on past the Overman home to Smithson’s Garage, three miles distant, to get the tire fixed. Failing to get the tire fixed, he returned to the Overman home, left the young lady at midnight and started back to town. At a bend in the road close to Berea schoolhouse and only a few hundred yards from the young lady’s home, he says he stopped to fix the tire himself. While bending down fixing the tire, someone shot him, he doesn’t know who.
Miss Overman, when interviewed by Sheriff Carmine early Monday morning, showed instant surprise and shock by the news of the shooting, and told a story corroborating Mann in every detail up to the point of his departure from her home. She told of having given Mann her watch to bring to town for repairs, and a compact to be filled with powder. The watch and compact were on Mann’s person when he was brought to the hospital.
Signs of Scuffle
Early Monday morning Tom Brothers, a Negro, found a cheap .25 calibre Spanish type mail order pistol at about the point where Mann was shot. Two bullets had been fired from the pistol. Brothers says there were signs of a scuffle in the road where the pistol was found. Also nearby the police found a footprint of a woman in the ditch by the side of the road.
And This Looks Funny
But no tools or tire repair material were found in the road where Mann says he was stooping over fixing his tire when shot. And here is another thing that bothers the police: according to Man’s story, he had run a distance of more than six miles on a flat tire before he stopped The inner tube of the punctured tire was not rum cut and showed only two small punctures. The tire was found in the road several hundred yards from where the shooting is alleged to have occurred.
The shooting is alleged to have occurred at the bend of the road just above Berea school house. Just a few hundred feet from there is the home of Dennis Overman Jr., brother of Miss Ruth Overman between Berea and the home of the girl’s father, Dennis Overman Sr.
Tommie Mann—Did He Have an Enemy
But the mystery thickens. Tommie Mann is a quiet, unassuming, friendly boy, highly regarded by all who know him. It has been said over and over again that he hasn’t an enemy anywhere. But Ira Garret, who worked with young Mann at the Auto & Gas Engine Works in the city, tells a different story. (word obscured) on a charge of larceny in the Pasquotank county jail and there when Mann was shot is a young fellow from the Berea section named Raynor Cartwright. Ira Garret says that Tommy Mann told him that Raynor Cartywrigt had threatened to do him up if he ever caught him in the Berea section visiting the Overman home. Cartwright is said to have been enamored of Miss Overman and, being in disrepute with her himself he resented the attentions paid her by the fellow from town.”
But Cartwright was in jail Sunday night when the shooting occurred. It is true there is a gang spirit prevalent in the Berea neighborhood and Cartwright may have had friends who obligated to make trouble for Mann in Cartwright’s absence in jail. But if anything like that were the case, there is no reason why Mann would not be well aware of it and willing to talk openly about the shooting.
Tommie Mann says he was stooping down fixing a tire when someone shot him out of the darkness. The course the bullet took from his abdomen upward thru his lung and stomach to a point near his arm pit would put an assassin who fired that bullet into a stopping figure in a very awkward position. The gun that put that bullet in Tommie Mann was pointed upward when it was fired. And it is hardly possible that it was fired by Mann himself, because there were no powder burns on his clothing. The theory of a self-inflicted wound is thereby exploded.
Mann’s Chances for Recovery Are Good
Thought to have been mortally wounded and at the point of death Monday, young Mann is holding his own with a good chance for recovery. Punctures of a lung are not fatal. The bullet pierced his stomach at alate hour at night, five hours after a meal, when the stomach was empty. That is in his favor. He has not developed peritonitis or septic poisoning. Stomachs can be sewed up. The bullet is in the flesh of his left side up near the arm pit and has gone all the damage it can do. It can easily be extracted any time. X-Ray pictures reveal it to be a small calibre bullet, such as found in the gun at the point in the road where Mann was shot.
Is there more to the shooting than appears on the surface? The police think so. They believe that Mann knows who shot him and is concealing the facts to protect someone. This clue the police are pursuing.
From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, April 9, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn83025812/1926-04-09/ed-1/seq-1/
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