Recordpub.com - PORTAGE PATHWAYS: Halloween prank cost teenager his life in 1918

By Roger J. Di Paolo

Record-Courier Editor

Before "Trick or treat" became a rallying cry for costumed children roaming door-to-door in search of candy, Halloween pranks kept many youngsters busy.

Pranksters -- usually teenage boys -- looked forward to an evening of unofficially sanctioned hijinks that sometimes ended up with the toppling of an outhouse or two in rural Portage County or similar acts of mischief at the expense of their neighbors.

But a high-spirited Halloween prank turned out to have deadly consequences in Shalersville Township in 1918 when the merriment of the evening ended in a fatal shotgun blast and a manslaughter charge.

Jack Ross was a 17-year-old boy who lived in Shalersville's northeast corner, near the Mantua border. Along with several other teenage friends, he set out on the night of Oct. 31, 1918, with Halloween tricks in mind.

With three or four other boys, Jack targeted the home of a neighbor, Alva Thorpe, for a series of pranks.

Thorpe went to his barn at 9 p.m. and found that his cow was gone. After searching for the animal unsuccessfully, he returned home to find his outhouse had been overturned. Later, he found his barn door had been opened again.

Fearful that thieves were trying to steal his livestock, Thorpe remained inside his home, watching the barn to see if the unwanted "visitors" would return to rustle away more of his animals.

Hearing someone go past his home, he saw a flash of light in the barn. Taking his gun from its holder, he ran outside toward the barn yelling, "Get out of here!" Then he fired.

After shooting, he ran toward the barn and saw three or four people running away from it. About an hour later, he said, he heard groaning from a nearby field.

A voice called to him, "Mr. Thorpe?"

"Did I hit you?" he replied.

"Yes, I'm dying."

"Who are you?"

"Ross. Get me home."

Jack Ross, who lived nearby with his parents and six siblings, died about two hours later. He bled to death from a torn femoral artery.

Alva Thorpe, 46, turned himself in to the sheriff. "I saw no one when I shot and I did not aim my gun," he told investigators.

He was released from custody the following day after Prosecuting Attorney Carl Curtiss ruled that he could not be held for shooting trespassers on his property.

Thorpe's legal respite proved to be short-lived, however. Following an inquest by Coroner L.A. Woolf, he was charged with manslaughter and taken to the Portage County Jail, where he was held pending a grand jury hearing.

Woolf's inquiry included testimony from several of Jack Ross' young companions. The tale they told was at odds with Thorpe's account of the fateful night.

Neighbors Cecil and Palmer Harper and Leon Hall admitted that they had gone to the Thorpe residence with Jack Ross on Halloween night. After throwing corn at the farmer's windows, they said Jack proposed getting the cow, taking it into Mantua and leaving it tied to a post in the village.

Jack, they said, went to the barn alone and returned with the cow, which they led to a nearby pasture and left there with some other cows.

Cecil Harper, 13, said he parted company with the others and was home in bed when Thorpe came to ask his father if he had seen the missing animal. He told Thorpe he could find the cow but did not want to implicate his friend.

Leon Hall, 19, testified that after letting Thorpe's cow loose, Jack Ross decided to let the farmer's pigs out. The pair went to the barn while their companions waited and watched.

Seeing someone coming around the side of the barn, Hall said he warned Jack to run. After taking a few steps, he said, he heard a gun go off.

"There, take that, will you?" he heard a voice say.

Afraid that he would be shot, Hall said that he ran into a field and met up with the other boys. "They got Jack," he told them.

The pranksters fled. "They decided the best thing was to say nothing and go home," the Ravenna Republican reported.

Undertaker M.T. Kelley reported that Jack Ross sustained a gunshot wound the size of a silver dollar, about one and a half inches deep, that cut his femoral artery and vein.

Thorpe testified that he thought he was about 90 feet away from the barn when he fired.

After test firing the weapon, however, Coroner Woolf said that shot "scattered indefinitely" at that range but at close range created a shot similar to the wound that killed Jack Ross.

Alva Thorpe, the father of two sons, was bound over to a grand jury after pleading not guilty to manslaughter. Unable to post his $1,000 bond immediately, he spent 10 days in jail before being released.

The case went before the grand jury in January 1919. No charge was returned.

As far as the law was concerned, the case of the deadly Halloween prank was closed.