Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1879 — A Bandit at Bay. [ARTICLE]

A Bandit at Bay.

The Italian journals mention the recapture of the formidable bandit, Sebastian Bani, who, afler his arrest by a body of carbineers, managed to escape from the hands of justice at the moment when he was being carried off to the railway station at Fabriano, in the Province of Ancona, by leaping from the bridge of Molinaccio. One of the carbineers broke biff leg in his endeavors to prevent the escape. After several unsuccessful atj&mpts, the pursuers at length discovered the, brigand’s new hiding-place. It was a lonely house in the country, not far from Fabriano. A Lieutenant of carbineers was directed to conduct tbe operations for his recapture, and to secure the culprit. The 13th instant, when a violent storm was raging, which enabled tbe carbineers to surround the house with out giving an alarm, was chosen for the execution of the enterprise. The Lieutenant, having posted his men around the bandit’s lair, entered the house. Bani, as soon as he caught sight of him, made a hurried retreat to the roof by a secret staircase, when he took in at a glance the full meauing of the situation. Beeing be was besieged, he resolved to defend himself to the last. Having no fire-arms, he turned the tiles of tne house into weapons of defense, and replied to every summons to surrender bv an uninterrupted shower of tiles and pebbles. Such was his skill that his projectiles hardly ever failed to hit some assailant. Three or four of the carbineers were already wounded, and, one of them rather seriously, when o mnianding officer, to avoid needless risks to the lives of his men, ordered them to fire. Bani was hit in the breast and stomach, but none the less continued to make a desperate defense. At length a Corporal, having discovered the stairs by which Bani had reached the roof, revolver in hand, grappled with the brigand, whom, although violently resisting in spite of his wounds and loss of blood, his adversary mastered at last. Bani was removed to the hospital at Fabriano, where his’wounds were pronounced very serious. A sum of money, amounting to about £3 12 shillings, \frhß found upon him, probably what was left of the produce of the robbery for which he had been arrested in the first instance.