New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1915-03-19
BLIND MAN GETS
BULLET MEANT
FOR DESERTER
Is Shot When Soldier
Opens Fire on Fugitive
in Uptown Crowd.
TRAMPLED, HE GOES
TO HOSPITAL, DYING
Gun Wielder Arrested After He
Brings Down Prisoner with
Wound in Neck.

George Paduris, blind man, making
a living begging pending the outcome
of a suit against a Pennsylvania coal
operator. in whose mine he was
blinded, was shot, probably fatally, and
Broadway near Thirty-eighth Street
thrown into a panic about l o'clock
yesterday afternoon. when Sergeant
Henry W. Wittingfeld. of the United
States army, opened fire on Joseph
Fleischmann, deserter, trying to es-
cape from custody.
Fleischmann received a flesh wound
in the neck. and after Wittingfeld had
been paroled in the custody of Cap
tain Michael Barry, L. s. A., to appear
in the Yorkville court this morning to
answer to a charge of felonious as
sault. he was taken to Fort Jay, Gov
ernor's Island. in irons.
The trouble had its inception early
in the day, when Fleischmann. tired
and hungry, walked into the West
Thirty-seventh Street police station
and said he was wanted as a desertor
from the army. Communication with
Governors Island confirmed his story
that he had taken French leave from
the 9th Infantry IN Texas City more
than a year ago. Wittingfeld was or
dered to Manhattan to bring him back
to the island.
At the police station Fleischmann,
who in the mean time had been fed,
was so glad to see a man in uniform
and so willing to face an army prison
that the sergeant did not think it
necessary to place him in irons. To-
gethe- the pair started for the Thirty
eighth Street station Of the Sixth Ave-
rue a." Near Thirty-seventh Street
the bright sunshine and the food he
had had apparently led Fleischmann
10 change his mind. lie made break
for liberty.
Wittingfeld yelled at him to stop, but
Fleischmann paid no heed. Into Thirty
eignth Street he swung, and then the
sergeant began firing with an army Colt.
The first shot hit Paduris, who had a
handful of shoestrings he was offering
to passersby. The second grazed
Fleischmann neck, a third went wild
and the fourth whistled by the e.r of
DR.. Charles Eunt just as he grappled
with the fleeing man a short distance
from Broadway. Instantly almost
Fleischmann and Hunt were in the CEN
tire of swrling mob, trampling over
on, another in an effort to get away
from the man with the pistol.
Of Eolico ,t.ltc
body n that part of broadway seem
ingly owns this first aid to the troubled
added to the excitement. Patrolmen
PetZner and Hawley finally worked
their way into the middle of the crowd
and let Wittingfeld arrest his man.
Tlen the four started for the West
Thirtieth Street station after DR.. Hunt
had applied first aid treatment to
Fleisc mann'S neck.
ThCA, and only then, was il discov-
cred that the blind beggar had been
shot. When he fell the crowd trying to
ge, out Of danger and the curious in
Their mad dash to see what was hap
pening tranpled over him. He was
thrown into an automobile and rushed
TO Bellevue, where it was declared an
immediate operation was his only
chance.
Paduris, it developed at Bellevue,
lived at 240 Cherry Street. Inquiry
there showed that the man, misfort mes
football for more than four years, made
his ome there with two other blind
men-victims, like himself, of Pennsyl-
yania coal mines. From Samuel Wolf,
a longshoreman, they rented a small
room, and each day the went out to
beg.