ESCAPED CUSTER SLAUGHTER.
Only to Fall Down Elevator Shaft to
Probable Death.
By a strange perversity of fate J. W. Turner, who lives at 1216 Locust street, escaped the Custer slaughter of 1876 and passed safely through the Spanish-American war, only to fall down an elevator shaft at the Avery Manufacturing Company's building, 1000 Santa Fe street, yesterday morning to almost certain death.
When Turner was 23 years old he enlisted in the famous Seventh cavalry which was annihilated by the Indians under Chief Sitting Bull at the massacre of the Little Big Horn. Turner himself did not participate in that battle. Three days before it came about he had received a two months' furlough in order to visit his family in Indianapolis, Ind., where he was born.
When he heard of the massacre he was but fifty miles from the battlefield. He turned back, scarcely believing the report that not a single one of his comrades had escaped slaughter, and proceeded to the battlefield where he readily saw that all he had been told was true. He has said over and over again that he would have given anything in the world which he possessed if he might have only been in that battle.
Turner is 54 years of age, and at the time of his accident he was employed by the Kansas City House and Window Cleaning Company, as foreman of the window cleaning gang at the Avery Manufacturing Company, 1000 Santa Fe street.
Yesterday morning he went into the office of the shipping clerk, and seeing the elevator boy, Sullivan Thomas, standing by the elevator shaft, he asked, "Are you going to take me up?"
"Sure," replied Thomas, as he got up from his chair and walked to the door of the shaft.
Thomas was familiar with the workings of the elevator and so opened the door himself, looking back at the boy as he did so. Still looking backward, he stepped through the door where the elevator should have been and fell to the basement. Turner was taken to the emergency hospital and afterwards removed to the general hospital. The hospital authorities said last night that there was a small chance of his surviving the night.
