Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 185, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 August 1915 — Sheriff Whitaker and Others Defendants in Damage Suits. [ARTICLE]

Sheriff Whitaker and Others Defendants in Damage Suits.

Attorneys Otto J. Bruce and George H. Hershman have filed a heavy damage suit in the La}ce county circuit court aggregating SI6,OO<X in which Sheriff Whitaker, of Lake county, is the chief defendant. Two complaints were filed against them and the complaining witnesses are Anthony Nomensen and Nicholas Minniger, of Lowell, who were badly injured in a fight, according to the complaint, that occurred at Robert Russell’s saloon at Cedar Lake on the evening of July 15th. Other defendants named in the two suits besides Sheriff Whitaker are Brice Whitaker, a brother, Deputy Sheriff Fred Friedly, R. Graham, Robert Russell, of Cedar Lake, and a bondsman of the sheriff, Edwin Bell, Fred Mott, and W. F. Bridge, of Hammond, and the Illinois Surety Co. ildttle inklings of the trouble between the sheriff’s crowd and the two Lowell citizens have been heard here and there since the evening of the fracas but nothing authentic was known until the complaints were made public and filed in the clerk’s office. The general report was that Nomenson htd an arm broken and was otherwise brfiised in the free for all mixup which occurred. Minniger was also reported as having received a number of bruises that he carried for some days. The beginning of the trouble started over politics and harkens back to the statement made by Minniger against the sheriff in the last campaign. Nomenson, the worst injured of the two men, alleges in his complaint that all of the defendants with the exception of the bondsmen “did on the evening of July 13th, in a rude, insolent manner with fists, blackjacks, beat the plaintiff about the chest and face, and breaking his left arm and bruising other parts of his body until he was partly unconscious.” Nomenson asks damages in the sum of $5,000 and in the second paragraph further asks $3,500 from Robert Russell, proprietor of the place, and names as defendants, the surety of Russell, the Illinois Surety Co. Minniger asks the same amount of damages as Nomenson.