A.A. LEA
Az Silver Belt
March 1888

A.A. Lea, an ex-convict and formerly a resident of Globe has 
at last had his light of life snuffed out by a bullet fired 
from a pistol at the hand of T.B. Fox, in a saloon at Silver 
King.  The shooting occurred on the 19th and from the meager 
information received here,  it seems was justifiable and a 
Coroner's jury and the committing magistrate pronounced it 
so and exonerated Fox. Lea had threatened his life on several 
occasions and in the altercation preceding the killing, 
reached his hand to his pistol pocket with the intention 
as supposed by Fox and others of getting the drop on him 
when Fox drew his weapon and fired with fatal result.

A letter to the Belt from Sliver King states that the opinion 
there is that Lea received his just deserts and that a feeling 
of security now exists as Lea had threatened the lives of 
others besides Fox and particularly the senior editor of the 
Belt who when occasion presented itself never failed to refer 
to Lea's lust for killing.

The crime committed by Lea on the 7th of May 1880 in Globe 
was the killing of Charles Skirdin, a blind man and for which 
instead of passing from time to eternity at the end of a 
rope he was given a dose of penitentiary life.  The blind 
man's anti-mortem statement made in the presence of G.A. 
Swasey, a Justice of the Peace, and reduced to writing is 
in brief that he warned Mrs. Johnson, the mother of a 
little girl of Lea's attempt to corrupt her child and 
it was for that Lea shot him.

Immediately after the shooting Lea was arrested and confined 
to the care of Constable Tom Kerr.