RAN AROUND IN SCANT ATTIRE.
Peter Mettlach Raced the Streets in
Unseasonable Raiment.
Running races with automobiles and street cars in his underclothes was the strange pastime of Peter Mettlach of 901 East Eighteenth street last night. Mettlach was placed in a sanitarium at Thirty-first street and Euclid avenue about two weeks ago.
Last night about 7 o'clock he told a nurse that he wanted to go home. She refused to give him his clothes, telling him that he was not in condition to go home yet. Mettlach, however, took a different view of the situation and went on back into his room on the second floor of the house, opened up a window and climbed down the fire escape and to freedom. He then entered his wild gambols over the southeast part of the city.
Patrolmen from No. 9 and No. 5 police stations were detailed to pick him up. After several hours he was seen by the motorman of a Swope park car, running by the side fo the car. Seeing the man in his underclothes, bareheaded and barefooted, the motorman stopped the car and urged the man to get in the car. When the car arrived at Forty-eighth and Harrison streets two policemen took the man on up to Thirty-first and Troost avenue, where his relatives met him with some clothes and took him home.
