Berrien County GaArchives News.....BERRIEN’S HORRIBLE KILLING -- Evidence Before Coroner in Sweat-Faulkner Killing. June 8, 1901
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Skeeter Parker skparker@planttel.net February 6, 2008, 3:47 pm

The Valdosta Times June 8, 1901
	According to reports brought from Berrien county this week a singular 
state of affairs developed at the coroner’s inquest over Luke Faulkner, who 
was shot and killed Saturday morning by John H. Sweat, at Faulkner’s home, 
four miles east of Nashville.
	Evidence is that Sweat drove up to Faulkner’s gate, called him out and 
paid him $5 that he owed him.  There had been some feeling between the men for 
some time, and as Faulkner turned to enter his gate, Sweat emptied the 
contents of a double-barrel shotgun in his back.  Faulkner fell backwards in a 
pool of water, and Sweat’s dogs covered him as if he had been an animal, 
biting and gnawing him during his dying agonies.
	Sweat handed his gun to his boy standing by and told him to shoot 
Faulkner’s housekeeper, who was at the cowpen near by, and who had been a 
witness to the killing.  The woman ran for her life, and the boy fired at her 
and pursued her with the dogs until she took refuge in a swamp near by.
	Sweat then drove to a neighbors and returned the gun, which he had 
borrowed, and then went to Nashville, where he surrendered to the sheriff.
	The coroner’s jury returned a verdict of wilful murder.
	Sweat is a county pauper and a helpless cripple.  Since early youth 
his body and lower limbs have been stiffened by rheumatism, until he can move 
neither body, leg, foot or head, only using his arms and being able to turn 
his eyes.  He travels over the country in an ox-cart, on which he reclines at 
full length in a chair made to fit his body.  Despite his condition, he has a 
family of seven or eight children, and is said to be a man of violent temper.  
He has to be lifted into his cart and out of it.  For fifteen or twenty years 
he has drawn a pension of $5 per month from the county pauper fund.
	Faulkner was a widower with several grown children.  Public sentiment 
is very strong against Sweat, who claims, however that Faulkner was attacking 
him with a knife when he shot to save himself.  Sweat is in jail awaiting 
action of Berrien Superior Court.
	From other sources, it is learned that Sweat and Faulkner have lived 
as neighbors.  A pumkin vine was planted on Sweat’s land and as it grew it 
invaded the land of Faulkner, who pulled up the vine to get rid of it.  This 
incensed Sweat and is said to have been the immediate cause of the killing.
 


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