Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1897 — WILD TIME IN PRISON. [ARTICLE]

WILD TIME IN PRISON.

Convict Assaults a Guard, Seizes His Revolver and Escapes. A sensational escape and a quick capture caused much excitement at tlie Ohio penitentiary Thursday night. Just before tlie hour when the prisoners wash for supper and the guards are shifted for the night turn, William Clark, a Cuyahoga County murderer doing a life sentence and employed in the broomshop, called Guard Duncan of Mount Gilead, ostensibly to show him a hole in the floor, Duncan leaned over and was struck a vicious blow in the back of the neck with a piece of gas pipe. Bert Spriggs, a Delaware County convict, started to assist the guard, when Clark, advancing with Duncan’s revolver, which had fallen from his pocket, threatened to shoot. Clark ran to the guardroom at the front gates and gave the guard’s signal with the iron handle. Capt. Saxbe, as usual, opened the gate. As soon as Clark passed the gate he opened fire on the crowd of guards and spectators. His aim was wild. In the guardroom he pulled the trigger again and shot Benjamin F. James, a Delaware County colored sub-guard, in the chin. Clark was closely followed in his attempt to escape by William Dempsey, jointly convicted with him of murder. Clark ran through the guardroom, fired at the guard in the reception room, and esea ped into the street. A federal prisoner named Sarter, employed as a “trusty” in the prison yard, seized a rifle which a guard had dropped in tlie excitement and ran past the guardhouse close on the heels of Clark. When the fugitive reached tlie bank of the Scioto River he paused a minute. Sarter quickly leveled the rifle and commanded C'ark to surrender on pain of death. The convict obeyed, his revolver being empty, and was recaptured by the guards, who had recovered their presence of mind by that time.