This Week in History: Gun battle in downtown Albert Lea leaves 2 dead

Published 8:22 pm Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Local

Sept. 30, 2010: The Federal Emergency Management Agency was in Freeborn County to make an assessment of damages to municipal infrastructure due to flooding. FEMA placed a preliminary damage estimate at $190,000.

Oct. 2, 1960: More labor unrest in Albert Lea was avoided when Queen Products Division of King-Seeley Corp. signed a three-year contractual agreement with Local 3539 of the United Steel Workers.

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Oct. 3, 1900: A gun battle left two dead and one wounded. John Hare, irate that his application as a penmanship instructor was denied, sought to take out his frustration on the public. Police officer Stubby, later to become Sherriff Stubby, was shot in the left side while attempting to intercept Hare downtown. Police Chief Sullivan, officers Cary and Anderson, and several armed citizens took up the chase in a running gun fight down Broadway. A Mr. Jones, proprietor of Albert Lea House, retrieved a pistol from officer Anderson but was killed in an exchange of fire with Hare. Hare was eventually shot in the head and died the following day.

 

National

2019: House Democrats took their first concrete steps in the impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump, issuing subpoenas demanding documents from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and scheduling depositions for other State Department officials.

A federal judge blocked new Trump administration rules that would allow the government to keep immigrant children in detention facilities with their parents indefinitely.

A Dallas jury sentenced white former police officer Amber Guyger to 10 years in prison, a day after convicting her of murder in the killing of her Black upstairs neighbor; she said she had mistaken his apartment for her own.

Oct. 1, 2017: A gunman opened fire from a room at the Mandalay Bay casino hotel in Las Vegas on a crowd of 22,000 country music fans at a concert below, leaving 58 people dead and more than 800 injured in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history; the gunman, 64-year-old Stephen Craig Paddock, killed himself before officers arrived.

2016: Scientists announced the first baby born from a controversial new technique that combined DNA from three people — the mother, the father and an egg donor. (The goal was to prevent the child from inheriting a fatal genetic disease from his mother.)

2015: Officials in Michigan declared a public health emergency over the city of Flint’s water in response to tests that showed children with elevated levels of lead.

2002: The Washington, D.C.-area sniper attacks began, setting off a frantic manhunt lasting three weeks. (John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were finally arrested for killing 10 people and wounding three others; Muhammad was executed in 2009; Malvo was sentenced to life in prison.)

2001: President George W. Bush condemned Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers for harboring Osama bin Laden and his followers as the United States pressed its military and diplomatic campaign against terror.

1996: A federal grand jury indicted Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski in the 1994 mail bomb slaying of advertising executive Thomas Mosser. (Kaczynski was later sentenced to four life terms plus 30 years.)

Oct. 3, 1995: The jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial in Los Angeles found the former football star not guilty of the 1994 slayings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman (however, Simpson was later found liable for damages in a civil trial).

1991: President George H.W. Bush announced in a nationally broadcast address that he was eliminating all U.S. battlefield nuclear weapons, and called on the Soviet Union to match the gesture.

1982: Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules laced with deadly cyanide claimed the first of seven victims in the Chicago area. (To date, the case remains unsolved.)

Sept. 27, 1964: The government publicly released the report of the Warren Commission, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy.

1962: A federal appeals court found Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett in civil contempt for blocking the admission of James Meredith, a Black student, to the University of Mississippi. (Federal marshals escorted Meredith onto the campus two days later.)

James Meredith, a Black student, was escorted by federal marshals to the campus of the University of Mississippi, where he enrolled for classes the next day; Meredith’s presence sparked rioting that claimed two lives.

1955: Actor James Dean, 24, was killed in a two-car collision near Cholame, California.

1863: President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day.