WOMAN DETECTIVE IS GAME.
Slugged, She Pursues and Captures Alleged Shoplifter.
A young woman detective of the Jones Store Company, after being struck twice yesterday by a man she declares is a shoplifter, chased him out of the store and down an alley, capturing him single-handed in an abandoned building at Thirteenth and Main streets.
Miss Lena Eshelman, the detective, was making her rounds yesterday at noon when, she says, the actions of a man in the hosiery department awakened her suspicions. She says that while she watched him he stealthily took two pairs of women's hosiery from a counter and slipped them under his coat. Miss Eshelman walked up to the man and placed her arm on his shoulder.
"You are under arrest," she told him. "I am a detective. I have caught you red-handed."
Employes of the store say the man did not tarry to argue, but doubled his fist, and struck the woman, knocking her against the wall. Miss Eshelman seized him a second time and again he struck her. The man ran out the door and the detective followed.
For half a block east on Twelfth street the chase continued and a crowd of nearly 300 men joined in pursuit of the fugitive, who turned south in the alley between Walnut and Main streets. He ran into a vacant building back of the Globe theater, with Miss Eshelman at his heels. She followed him into the basement of the building, groping in the dark and stumbling over discarded boxes and lumber. The man ran upstairs again and was trying to unlock a door at the head of the stairway when his persistent pursuer seized him for the third time.
S. H. Tilfree, Pinkerton detective, was in advance of the crowd which joined in the chase and he assisted Miss Eshelman in subduing the man, who was taken to police headquarters. He said his name is William Ward, 25 years old, and that he came here from St. Louis. Ten pairs of hosiery, valued at $1 a pair, were found in his pockets.
