The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-10-29
COfnan and Estes Held for
 the Shooting,
CORONER PARIS STATEMENT
TalI<s of the Killing at Warner Mines and Points Out CIrcumstantlal
 DetaIls-ouestlon of Per
 sonal Enmity Discussed.

R. D. Coffman. justice of peace at Brookside. and Fred Estes. clerk in store at the same place. will have a pre- liminary hearing before H. B. Abernathy, justice of the peace, this afternoon at o'clock. The men are charged with the murder of Fred Johnson. a negro. who was shot on the night of October IS, at Warmers mines, afterwards dying at St. vincents hospital in this city.
 Yesterday afternoon at o'clock Con- man was taken to the office of Justice of the Peace Abernathy and asked for bond on the grounds that the warrant under which he was arrested was worded "un- lawfully firing a pistol" and that the charge, under the circumstances, should be manslaughter. The justice of the peace said that as the warrant read he was charged with murder, and ball would not be granted. "A trial for this afternoon was then arranged and Coffman was la ken back to the county jail Estes did not go before the justice of the peace but remained in jail.
 About twenty witnesses have been sum- moned to appear at the preliminary hear ing. Yesterday, while Coffman was in the office of the justice of the peace, large crowd appeared in the room and the hallway was filled with curious and Interesting spectators.
 Coroner Paris said there was strong evidence against the accused men, and that at the investigation he held before the warrants were sworn out witnesses testified that Coffman and Estes did the shooting When asked about the state ment made by Coffman that oltter enmity existed between them the coro- nor said that if such were the case he knew nothing of 1t.
 In speaking of the charges against the men Coroner Paris said: Y Know 1t to be a fact that men have been shot down out at Warmers mines, and that the eases were not reported to me until some weeks afterward. Reports to this effect have been made to me many times. When Johnston was killed the matter was not reported to me until after the man was dead and buried, and I had to dig him up. In this Investigation I find that from 10 o'clock that night to the time of the shooting at 11:30, the men had been go- ing through the quarterS oi lhe hesioeo and holding up and searching them for pistols or something else on which to prosecute them. They would have held up a crowd of five negroes, but three of them broke and ran, and the indis- putable evidence Is that Estes and Golf man ran after and shot at them. There is tree where the negro Johnson was shot, and in this tree na1r dozen bull lets are buried. A negro named Douglas was in a corner of the fence, not ten feet from the tree, but on the opposite side from where Coffman and Estes were. | and he would have probably been hit but for the tree. Douglas says Coffman cursed him, and said If he didn't get up he would kill him.
 q didn't even so much as know that Coffman was a witness against me before the grand jury. He has been friendly with me, especially since he is in trouble
 "The public out there at the mines de- manded a thorough investigation of this case and I have examined over twenty witnesses. The evidence unmistakably shows that Coffman and Estes did the shooting"