Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 168, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1915 — Fined $5 For Throwing Youth in Gifford Ditch. [ARTICLE]

Fined $5 For Throwing Youth in Gifford Ditch.

Harry Beebe is in jail laying out a fine of $5 and costs, amounting to about $lB, for having thrown Johnnie Chury, a South Bend boy who had been working in the onion fields near Newland, into the Gifford ditch, almost resulting in the boy’s drowning. Johnnie is 11 years old. He was standing on the bridge over the ditch. Several foreigners were waiting their shirts 'n the ditch and Beebe grabbed the lad and threw him into the stream, which was running swiftly and the boy being unable to swim disappeared. There was considerable excitement when one of the foreigners who was a little further down stream than the others swam out into the ditch and felt about with one arm, finally, more than chance than otherwise, catching the lad by the hair and bringing him to the surface. The boy seemed more dead than alive and it took considerable work to restore him to life. Finally he began to vomit and then came to. He was very sick and weak, however, and two of the foreigners took him to the home of his mother, Mrs. Mary Koffach, at South Bend. She heard their story and came at once to Rensselaer, bringing with her the little boy and the two foreigners. She made an affidavit against Beebe before Prosecutor Sands, who had Beebe arrested and taken before a justice of the peace, where he pleaded guilty to assault and was fined $5. He did not expect to do the boy any harm, it is stated, but thought that he would be able to swim out of the ditch and when he saw that the lad had sunk he was mighty badly frightened. Mrs. Kovach and Johnny returned to South Bend this Saturday morning.