Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 3, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1859 — Two Prisoners Shot. [ARTICLE]

Two Prisoners Shot.

[From the Columhu's (Ohio) Statesman,

A shocking affair occurred at the Penitenitentiary, on Wednesday afternoon, about three o’clock. While the convicts were at work as usual upon the new wall which is being built outside of the yard, two of them, named M. R. Shade, alias Richard Dort, and John Sweeney, attempted to escape by Tuning out of the yard. The alarm was immediately given, and the guards under whose direction they had been working, fired their revolvers at the flying convicts, but without effect. The guards stationed upon the wall, however, also fired their muskets with more fatal effect. Sweeney received two loads of buck shot, one in the neck and one in the thigh. Shade fell, wounded in both legs, and he also received a load iu the back, part of which penetrated to the vicinity of the heart, and it is feared will prove fatal. They were both returned to the hospital, where the proper medical assistance was rendered by the physician of the Penitentiary. Sween ey, it is thought, will recover, his wounds being severe, but not necessarily mortal; but as to Shade, scarcely a hope is entertnined. The latter’s injuries are serious, and be suffers intensely. Sweeney is an Irishman, and Shade a native of Ohio.