Obituaries: John McDow, 1926, Winn Parish, LA
Submitter: Greggory E. Davies, 120 Ted Price Lane, Winnfield, LA 71483
Source: Winnfield News-American
Date: March 26, 1926
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Shooting At Tullos Results In Death Of John McDow, Deputy

Harvey Bradford in Serious Condition in Hospital and Others Wounded after
Engaging in Pistol Duel Saturday Night

John R. McDow of Olla, deputy sheriff and highway officer, was shot twice in
the neck and instantly killed by Harvey Bradford, son of J. D. Bradford, chief
of police at Tullos, about 6 p.m. Saturday. A pistol duel between Bradford,
Deputy Sheriffs Hardy and Bailey, and Deputy Marshal R. H. Pendarvis followed,
in which it is alleged twenty five or thirty shorts were exchanged, resulting
in Hardy and Pendarvis receiving slight flesh wounds in their hands and
Bradford was shot, it is stated, six times, all in his legs except one shot
wich passed through his body. Bradford was immediately sent to Baptist
Hospital in Alexandria.

Saturday night Sheriff Heflin of Winn Parish received a call for help at his
office here, eighteen miles from Tullos. It was feared at the time that "civil
war" between the Tullos officers and the Parish officers, had become a fact,
but when officers here, headed by Deputy Sheriffs Boyett and Willis, reached
Tullos the shooting was over and the LaSalle Parish deputies, Pendarvis,
Bailey, and Hardy, had left town and Harvey Bradford had been taken to an
Alexandria sanitarium, accompanied by his father.  It was reported that he
LaSalle deputies had gone to Jena to report the battle.

The Winn Parish officers learned they reported on their return here, that
from information they could get the trouble started in the O. K. Caf‚ when
Harvey Bradford and two unidentified men engaged in a scuffle during which
a pistol was discharged.  This attracted the attention of Deputy Sheriff
McDow, who happened to be across the street.

Bradford and the men he was squabbling with came out on the caf‚ gallery as he
reached it, Murphy, the caf‚ owner, said he did not know what McDow did or
said to Bradford, but that Bradford suddenly fired two shots, both striking
McDow in the neck, one of the bullets severing the jugular vein.  As he fell,
McDow fired.  Murphy, experience in oil field free-for-all gun fights, said
this experience directed his footsteps towards the woods behind the caf‚ with
as much speed as he could put them.

The shooting attracted the attention of other deputies in the town -
Pendarvis, Bailey, and Hardy - who rushed to McDow's assistance.  When
Bradford saw them coming he ran back through the caf‚, putting an old woman
named Matthews into the kitchen with him, where he sought to keep her in front
of him as a shield.  Following a pistol parlay with the thin plank walls
between, in which twenty shots were fired and in which Bradford was wounded,
he flashed through the caf‚ again, out the front door, with the deputies on
his heels, and ran across the street into Benson's barber shop, through the
shop and into a back room, where he hid in a cupboard.

After another parlay, in which the deputies, punctuating their pleadings with
pistol shots, sought to persuade him to surrender, Bradford, with additional
bullet holes in his legs, came out.  He was shot twice in each leg and twice
in the back.

Deputy Sheriff McDow was 50 years old and was the father of two children, his
wife and family living in Olla, seven miles north of Tullos.