May 14, 1916 ~ CONDUCTOR REESE FREED.

May 14, 1916
CONDUCTOR REESE FREED.

Man Who Knocked Smoker From Car Not Held for Death.

Justice Casmir Welch discharged Conductor Curtis C. Reese from custody yesterday when Reese was arraigned before him charged with the killing of Carl A. Kiefer, who died at the General Hospital on April 20 a few hours after he was ejected from a Troost avenue street car at Thirty-first street by Reese.

According to the testimony of Rese and other witnesses, Reeses' car on the Troost avenue line was southbound. Keifer and another man boarded it at Eighteenth street. Both men, Reese said, persisted in smoking, despite his remonstrances. At Thirty-first street one of the men struck him, he said, and in the fight that followed Reese accidentally knocked Keifer off the rear vestibule of the car. Keifer's head struck the pavement.

Reese stopped the car and he and the motorman, Y. M. Woods, carried the injured man into a nearby drug store. From there he was removed to the hospital. His skull was fractured and he died a few hours later. Reese was arrested by officers from No. 2 police station.