|
Heavy Guard Posted
A heavy guard was thrown around the hospital as the State's Attorney was questioning Williams, for a crowd, angered by the third crime in the last few weeks in which Negroes have been charged with wronging whites, gathered in the streets of Salisbury.
Mr. Chatham was the first to inform the police of the shooting. When he heard the reports of the pistol shots and then was unable to resume his conversation with Mr. Elliott he telephoned headquarters.. The police reached the lumber dealer's office just as young Elliott shot Williams.
Reconstructing the crime, the police said Williams probably walked up behind Mr. Elliott as he sat at the telephone and pressed the muzzle of the pistol to his head. The bullet passed through Mr. Elliott's head and lodged in a filing case near his desk. Negro Then'Shot Self
The second shot fired by Williams pierced his own chest, the police said. There were three cartridges in the pistol confiscated by Sheriff G. Murray Phillips. Each had been discharged. The third cartridge, the police pointed out, was exploded when the lumber dealer's son shot his father's assailant.
The younger Mr. Elliott told the police Williams "must have been drunk." He said "there had been no quarrel between father and him. He had been working for us for seven or eight years. We gave him work whenever we had it, He has even worked here this week, but we did not have work for him today."
Mr. Elliott has been prominent in Salisbury and Eastern Shore business circles for many years. He is survived by his widow, his son, Daniel J., Jr., and two daughters, Mrs. E. E. White, Jr., of Salisbury, and Mrs. Warren T. Hamm, Jr., of Spartanburg, S. C.
|
