The Evening World

SHOT DOWN IN COLD BLOOD.

An Affair in an East Side Saloon That May End in the Death Chair.

Edward Moran, a roofer, living at 318 East Forty-fourth street, is in a dying condition at Bellevue Hospital from the results of pistol shot wounds in the abdomen and right thigh inflicted by his former fast friend, James Meinnaugh, a tile setter, living at 317 East Forty-fourth street.

The shooting occurred in M. J. Downing's saloon, on the southeast corner of Second avenue and Forty-fourth street, at 10:30 this morning, and according to Moran's ante-mortem statement to Coroner Messemer it looks like a deliberate attempt at murder.

Moran met Meinnaugh in Downing's saloon last night, and the two men got into a heated controversy.

“There was some talk going about,” said Moran; “his wife told me about it. She said I could tell her husband how she was carrying on in the daytime.

“I never said it. I asked him about it, and he said I was a liar. I took him outside the saloon and slapped him in the jaw two or three times, and asked him if he had had enough, and he said 'Yes.' Then we parted.

“This morning he came into the saloon again, and spoke to me all right. He walked past me two or three times, and then turned suddenly around and shot me twice, once in the abdomen and once in the right thigh.

“I said nothing to him at all this morning. He did not threaten me last night or offer to hit me back. He was not drunk this morning and he was not exactly sober.”

After shooting Moran, Meinnaugh threw his revolver, a thirty-two calibre weapon, upon the floor and made his escape, no one attempting to stop him.

He was captured soon after, however, by Detective Cuff, of the East Fifty-first street station, taken before Moran, who identified him, and locked up in the Tombs.

Moran, the surgeons say, cannot recover. He is twenty-seven years old, married and has a little girl, Jennie, six years old. Meinnaugh is twenty-five years old and is a married man.