Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Two tragic stories came out of North Idaho, both involving guns.

Several 12-year-old boys on a ranch east of Kellogg had gone on a hunting excursion. When they returned home, one of the boys was cleaning his .22-caliber rifle.

It was lying across his lap and he believed it was unloaded. He worked the lever and pulled the trigger. The gun fired.

At first, he didn’t think anybody was hurt. But then his companion, who had been crawling beneath the bars of the corral 30 feet away, ran up and cried that he had been shot.

The boy collapsed and died shortly afterward. At first, the other boys told police that the victim had shot himself. But the boy with the gun told police the truth.

Meanwhile, in Kellogg, a laundry driver named Ohmer Vaughan, 21, was found dead of a gunshot wound in the room of Mrs. Pearl Ruffel.

Mrs. Ruffel told police that she kept an unloaded revolver in a chiffonier drawer in her room. Vaughan, she said, went to the drawer, took out the revolver, pointed it at his heart and said, “Well, here goes.” Then he fired and died instantly.

She told police she was “dumbfounded” by the incident and had no idea how the revolver came to be loaded, unless Vaughan had loaded it himself.

Police were suspicious of her story and arrested her for murder.