Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1893 — A Boy Badly Shot. [ARTICLE]

A Boy Badly Shot.

A serious and dangerous accident occured to a Rensselaer boy, on Thanksgiving day. Sanford Bowman, the 19 year old son of Mrs. Mattie Bowman, was out hunting, in company with John Leahy and Will' Adams. About three mites south they tied their horses, and when ready to come back, young Bowman got into Adams’ buggy and when turning the horse around, drove into a deep rut. This nearly threw him out, and In some way both barrels of his gun were discharged , and terribly mangled his left arm, from the elbow to the shoulder. Nearly all of the muscle was carried away, and the artery and nerves and tendons were severed. The bone was not greatly injured, owing perhaps to the fact that the gun was loaded with very small shot. Young Leahy put the wounded boy into his buggy and drove in a gallop back to town, where Dm. Hartsell, and J. H. and V. E. Loughridge dressed the wound. That the boy did not bleed to death before he reached town was probably owing to the mangled and tom nature of the wound, and perhaps to the searing effect of the powder flash. The injured boy is doing fairly well so far, but he is not yet past the danger period of secondary hemorrhage, and blood poisoning.

Mrs. Bowman, the boy’s mother, who has lately moved to town from Newton tp., is having vastly more than her share of afflictions. Only a few days before this accident, she returned from the funeral of her son, Charles, at Wichita, Kans., and only about two month* earlier she followed her bright and beautiful daughter Daisy, to her grave; another daughter, Mrs. North, is hopelessly sick with consumption, and now this other son is maimed for life, if no worse results follow, by this accident.