This day in history: Feds seized stuffed South American jaguar from Spokane store. ‘Rum gang’ wounded deputy in gun battle

From 1976: Federal agents impounded a stuffed jaguar from a Spokane taxidermy store.

They said the jaguar had been shot in the jungles of South America in 1973. It was illegal, under endangered species legislation, to import a jaguar or transport it over state lines.

The seizure came after federal authorities fined an Ohio man for violating at the Endangered Species Act. He had apparently imported the cat’s skin into the U.S. via Miami and hired the Spokane firm to mount it.

From 1926: A desperate “rum gang” blasted its way to freedom through a squad of police and Prohibition officers, wounding a Sandpoint deputy.

The gang was still on the run, playing “a game of hide and seek” with a citizens’ posse in an area north of Sandpoint.

It began when officers discovered a cache of 25 cases of beer and whisky stashed “in an old log and lumber shack.” The officers staked it out and waited to see who would show up.

When two officials saw a man running through the brush, they ordered him to halt. But then another man jumped from the bushes, “put a gun against the federal man’s back,” and forced him and the other official to walk away.

Meanwhile, back at the lumber shack, the police squad – now divided – saw three other men cross the field. The officers chased the men and came upon them unexpectedly, lying behind a small hummock.

They ordered the suspects to put up their hands, but “the response was a pistol shot, followed by a fusillade.”

“More than 30 shots were fired before the outlaws rolled under the fence and slid down the hill to the bottoms along the slough and made their escape north,” said The Spokesman-Review.

The deputy was wounded in the foot and was treated by a physician. A citizen’s posse planned to resume the search the next day.