The minister who was sent to Spartanburg to get J. B. Vickers, an escaped prisoner and later shot his man as the latter attempted to escape again, is not wholly responsible for the tragedy. While it is true that he fired the shot which killed Vickers, the system under which he was operating is partially to blame.
Apparently the minister was not familiar with prisoners, and he was sent for the man because, it is said, there was a scarcity of officers about the prison at the time. He may have asked for the assignment, as a matter of fact, since he is interested in a society organized for the benefit of prisoners. He may have felt that he could handle Vickers as the society thinks prisoners should be handled.
That he didn’t know his business is demonstrated by the fact that he didn’t have Vickers handcuffed, according to eye witnesses to the shooting. Here he was bringin back to the State prison a man desperate enough to run away from one guard who also failed to handcuff him. That theory may sound all right but it is hard to make it work, for the man who makes one break for liberty will make another.
The minister-guard denies that he shot Vickers, offering the alibi that the gun exploded or something. That demonstrates further our contention that he should not have been allowed to handle prisoners. A man who knows no more about firearms than that should not have them. He took the pistol from his pocket for some purpose, and it is going to be hard to convince a jury that he did not intend to use it to stop Vickers. If that wasn’t his purpose, why carry the gun? We do not know all about the society—created to aid prisoners—in which he was interested, but we would venture the guess that it bitterly opposes the practice of guards shooting at prisoners. And here we have the spectacle of one of the members brandishing a gun, if not for the purpose of threat then for what?
Officials of the State prison should know the kind of persons they send out after desperate characters. If this guard had used ordinary precaution and a certain amount of common sense, the shooting would not have occurred, for he would have had Vickers handcuffed to himself and there would have been no dash for liberty.
From the editorial page of the Concord Daily Tribune, Monday, Sept. 6, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1926-09-06/ed-1/seq-4/
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