About the hour of 12 o’clock the night of Friday, August 10, Officer W.W. Pratt of the city of Lanark, made the arrest of a husky tramp who was hanging about the depot. The officer started with his prisoner down Broad street to the station; when they reached the Carroll Street crossing Pratt noticed the man making a quick move to his hip pocket as if to draw a shooting iron, and he struck at his hand with his “Billy” but the tramp was to quick for him and drawing his revolver, held it close to Pratt’s person and fired hitting him in the side; the man then broke from Pratt , who followed him down Carroll Street and across to Locust, firing two shots after him as he ran. When Pratt reached Locust Street failing strength compelled him to give up the chase and turned toward Dr. Wales’s office and as he came opposite fell from exhaustion. He awoke people residing near and soon Dr. Wales was treating his wounds. They found the ball to have entered between the ribs in the seventh inter-costal space and four inches from the medium abdominal line; its course being downward and inward and lodged in the abdominal cavity beyond the probe.

Meanwhile the fire alarm had been sounded and the citizens were arroused; the excitement was great and a considerable time passed before anyone got in pursuit of the vagrant who had done the shooting, but after a time a party gave chase, soon striking the trail in the road leading south-west from Lanark down into the Black Oak region. The track was easily followed as the fellow ran in the road where the dust was deep and his shoes left a peculiar track. Sheriff Sutton was routed out and met the Lanark Party some miles south of this city. The trail was followed until it gave out amid a wilderness of scrub, timber and corn fields where the hunt was given up and the parties returned after having arroused the surrounding country to be on guard. Upon his return the Sheriff offered a hundred dollars reward for the capture of the man and here the matter rested until Sabbath morning when young fritz who works for C. H. Kim of the Salem Nursery came to the city and informed the Sheriff that a man answering the description had just breakfasted at Keim’s. Sheriff at once gathered a posse and started in pursuit. When they arrived at Keims they found the man had told Keim that he had nothing to eat since Friday night this statement excited the farmer’s suspicions and when he started to leave the tramp asked the way to Freeport which did not lead through Lanark; this confirmed the previous suspicions and Keim sent his man to town as before related. The Sheriffs party drove on towards Lanark, along the south road hot upon the trail, and about half way between this and the city came in sight of their man a bad crossing in the cross road in the cross road compelled them to leave their team and the Sheriff behind while the boys went on foot. Don Frazer, City Marshal Robbe, Jack Keiter and Joe McLaughlin were the parties who made the arrest. The man was in a thoroughly exhausted condition and had not the strength to exert himself further to escape. Just before the party came to him he threw away his revolver which was afterwards found.

The prisoner was taken to Lanark and identified and given preliminary examination before Squire Noble, who remanded him to the jail in default of $ 5000.00 bonds until the September term of the Circuit Court. He gives his name as William Nohl says he is from near Wakashaw Wisconsin, which place he left two weeks since. He is of German descent and his parent both live at Wakashaw and says they are quite well off. He is tall, without any beard, heavy set fellow of brutish aspect and about 21 years of age. He looks and acts like a man of about half sense, though he has a kind of low shrewd cunning about him and he may be feigning simpleness for effect. He does not deny being arrested by Pratt on that night but denies shooting him or says that if he did do it he was so drunk he doesn’t remember it. He says he thinks Pratt fell and shot himself. When arrested he had thirteen dollars in money and was comfortably clad. He says that when they were hunting him Saturday he saw several pass him a dozen feet away while he lay in the bush. He got bewildered and half famished in the thickets where he was hiding and when he made a break for the open country he did not discover until he reached Keim’s that he was getting back into the vicinity of Lanark