Oh, my! Here’s quite a story from the Skidmore News of Skidmore, Missouri, April 13, 1922, page 1:
Raymond Skidmore Shot.
Raymond Skidmore, son of Mr. and Mrs. James Skidmore of this place, was shot Friday morning while at work on the Burlington building in Chicago. His home is in Detroit, Michigan, and he had gone to Chicago to work on the Burlington building which was damaged by fire recently. The bullet lodged in his left shoulder, and he was suffering considerably at the last report, although the extent of the injury has not been determined.
A Chicago paper gives the following account of the affair:
“Every nook and cranny of the Burlington building, 547 West Jackson boulevard, which was recently damaged in the big near west side fire, was searched by the police today for three men, believed to be labor sluggers, who shot a Landis award carpenter working on the tenth floor of the structure. It was believed for a time that the men were still in the building after the police arrived. More than 2,000 employees who had arrived for work were forced to wait out in the street while the search was conducted.The carpenter, Raymond Skidmore, 33, who lives outside the city, is employed with the John Griffiths & Son Company, contractors, at 112 West Adams street. He had commenced his work of repairing the damaged building when three men, all young, emerged from the shadows on the tenth floor.
One of the men fired a shot at Skidmore, wounding him in the left arm. The men fled.
Within a few minutes after the shooting a score of policemen from Desplaines street station and several squads of detectives from the bureau arrived on the scene, and a cordon of officers was thrown around the structure, while others went inside to make a search for the carpenter’s assailants.Crowds of employees of the building started to congregate on the outside. As the search on each floor was completed the employees of that floor were permitted to go to their work. All fourteen floors of the structure were searched. No trace of the men was found.
Skidmore was taken to the Presbyterian hospital, where it was said his wound was a slight one.
At the hospital he told the police that one of his assailants stopped him on the street two weeks ago and warned him to quit working on the job. ‘If you don’t well get you,’ the man told him.An elevator man employed in the Burlington building told the police he took three young men answering the description of Skidmore’s assailants up to the tenth floor about 7 o’clock this morning. They all wore light overcoats. They did not appear to be much over 21 years old, he said.