The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer

Tragedy at Springfield, Ills.

CHICAGO, May 29.

At Springfield, Illinois, on Friday night last, a young man named Colman Bancroft attempted to shoot a surveyor named McClure, who was surveying a route for the Springfield & Northwestern Railroad across the property of Bancroft's mother, residing in the north part of Springfield. The police attempted to arrest him for the act, but Bancroft, with pistol and hatchet, kept them off, and the attempt was given up for a time. On Saturday afternoon Captain Robbins, of the night police, with a posse, visited the residence of Bancroft's mother and found Bancroft, who had fastened himself in a room and refused to surrender, being armed and prepared to defend himself. Capt. Robbins then took a double-barreled gun loaded with buckshot and fired at Bancroft, who was sitting near a window, killing him instantly. An inquest was held yesterday afternoon by acting Coroner Wood, and a verdict rendered of justifiable killing.

A few hours previous to the occurrence Louis Souther, local editor of the Springfield Register, visited Bancroft for the purpose of "interviewing" him in relation to the events of the previous day, but was ordered away by Bancroft, who, as Souther turned to leave, discharged a revolver at him, wounding Souther in the arm. Bancroft and McClure, the surveyor whom Bancroft shot at the former day, met yesterday morning near Bancroft's residence and exchanged four or five shots. McClure was wounded in the wrist and thigh, but not seriously, and Bancroft was slightly wounded in the hand. Bancroft had declared that he would not surrender or be taken alive, and he carried out this programme to the end.