Prisoner Leaves Court, Opens Fire

On Trial For Carrying Guns, He Was Hiding Another

DANIEL MORROW "You got me."

RURAL POLICEMAN Ralph H. Lamb: "I didn't have any bullets left."

JOE WALKER, also of the Sheriff's Dept.: "Don't touch it," he warned as he kicked the gun away from the wounded man.

LT. E. L. LEWIS of the City Police Dept.: "I pulled in and blocked him," after the prisoner had ordered a man out of a car and climbed in himself. When he saw Lt. Lewis, the prisoner fled on foot and was later shot down.

CONSTABLE AL KIMBALL: "I fired two shots."

Emptying a new six-shot revolver he had kept concealed during the trial at which he was convicted for possessing two other pistols, 27-year-old Daniel Morrow of Duncan Route 1, staged a shootout with county and city police and a constable here Friday afternoon - and lost.

He whipped out the pistol and opened fire as he was being led from the courtroom to county jail. The shooting covered an area from the walkway between the courthouse and jail, down the south side of the jail along a sidewalk, and ended with Morrow sprawled and wounded in Daniel Morgan Avenue.

SCENE OF SHOOTOUT was along this sidewalk and parking lot on the south side of the Spartanburg County Jail. To the right out of the picture is the walkway between the jail and courthouse, where it all started. Daniel Morrow opened fire, broke and ran in this direction ,falling wounded on Daniel Morgan Avenue at approximately the center of the black circle. He was brought down by a policeman's gunfire.

A .38 police slug fired during a 30-shot fusillade outside Spartanburg County Courthouse, ripped a hole through Morrow's right thigh and dropped him, writhing, into the street bordering the County Jail grounds on the western side. A cordon of police assembling fast from among glass shattered cars on the crowded parking lot, quickly surrounded the wounded man, their guns drawn, safeties off, the triggers at the ready.

Morrow's revolver lay upon the pavement, inches away from his body and one outstretched, trembling hand.

"Don't touch it," Rural Policeman Joe Walker warned, his police special trained upon the wounded man's mid-section, as he kicked Morrow's gun further away.

"You hit me; you got me," Morrow whimpered.

He did not resist.

Bright red blood spurted from the bullet hole in his thigh and jetted into a widening pool around his legs and feet.

Brewington Ambulance drivers and first aid men, called by police, arrived within moments. They slowed the flow of blood and carried Morrow, now quiet and very pale, to the General Hospital emergency room.

Rural Policeman Ralph H. Lamb, of Campobello, Route 2, stood helpless as he said Morrow emptied his revolver and ceased firing.

"I didn't have any bullets left," said Lamb, tall, gray-haired and a former state highway patrolman. Later, he telephoned his wife Ruth and their daughter Nancy that he was safe.

The timetable:

At 12:14 p.m., 14th Circuit Judge William L. Rhodes, Jr., of Hampton completed his General Sessions courtroom charge to 12 men and women jurors in Case No. 150 of the State vs. Daniel Morrow, charged by indictment with "carrying a pistol."

Two small pistols then rested upon the mahogany ledge bordering the witness chair.

Solicitor John Nolen and Assistant Solicitor Milton Smith contended, by jury arguments and police witnesses Lt. Albert Alverson and Gra Allen of the County Sheriff's Department, that they were taken from a Cadillac being driven by Morrow outside a Greer motel early the morning of March 3.

Eleven minutes later, jurors returned with a verdict convicting Morrow of violating the state anti-firearms law.

County Detectives Capt. Clarence Painter and Probation Officer Clyde Giles read out a long list of housebreaking and larceny and storebreaking and grand larceny convictions, plus prison sentences, against Morrow, who then said, "I've just been out of the penitentiary 16 months."

Earlier, Lt. Alverson and Policeman Allen had testified, during the jury's absence from the courtroom, that they arrested Morrow during their investigation of the March 2 escape from State Prison of William Boyd Corn, serving an eight-year sentence for shotgun assault and battery with intent to kill upon State Highway Patrolman William R. Green on a dead-end road off Boiling Springs Road in January, 1961. County police bloodhounds and SLED agents pursued Corn for several days and nights in the western section of this county. Corn later turned himself in at the State Penitentiary.

Solicitor Nolen and Assistant Solicitor Smith were barred by pre-trial prosecution-defense stipulation from injecting any mention of Corn during proceedings before trial jurors.

At about 12:35 p.m., Judge Rhodes sentenced Morrow to 11 months imprisonment, noting that he had already served 31 days in jail.

Judge Rhodes then informed jurors that the portions of testimony they had been courtroom - barred from hearing alluded to Lt. Alverson's and Policeman Allen's testimony, concerning the sheriff department's Morrow - Corn investigation.

Alverson told the court that when he and Allen arrested Morrow and seized the two pistols in the Cadillac, Morrow "warned us" that Corn was "inside the motel with a shotgun," that they heard a gun fire and the crash of breaking glass and that Corn escaped.

IN TESTIMONY TO GUNFIRE OUTSIDE JAIL
Several Autos Damaged in Hail Of Lead

Morrow claimed he had borrowed the Cadillac to meet a girlfriend at the motel at around 1 a.m. He said the pistols in evidence as State exhibits were not his.

"I'm like the jury," Judge Rhodes told Morrow, "I can't buy your story. According to the testimony, all the time you were associating with this escaped convict."

He then directed defense Atty. John Rollins of Greer to "Bring the prisoner forward."

Sentence was imposed.

Lt. Andrew Hughes and Rural Policemen Lamb and Eddie Gault escorted Morrow from the courtroom.

Moments later the crack of pistol shots resounded faintly through the courthouse.

This reporter dropped the probation proceedings Judge Rhodes was hearing and ran outside and into gunfire bedlam.

This was the scene:

Morrow was running and ducking between cars on the jail parking lot, moving erratically and fast and looking backward and firing.

Policemen Hughes, Lamb and Walker were in hot pursuit, also running between cars and ducking and firing.

City Police Lt. E. L. Lewis and Magistrate's Constable Al Kimball wheeled their cars into the gun-powder-smoking area, jumped out and began firing their pistols.

We ran through the crowd and found Morrow outstretched with blood spouting from his leg.

This is how it happened as police told this reporter on the scene:

POLICEMAN LAMB - "We had just brought Morrow from inside the courthouse and were under the overhead bridge span connecting the courthouse and the jail. Suddenly, Morrow reached inside his coat and grabbed his pistol - from underneath the left side of his coat, as I recall. He started firing. He broke loose and ran. He jumped over the hedge between the jail and the parking lot and kept turning around and running and shooting. He fired six shots at me. I continued running after him, ducking between cars, and firing."

"Down on the parking lot, he stopped, forced a man to get out of his car, then he got into the car and then he jumped out and started running and shooting."

"I don't know who shot him. My six-shot pistol was empty, but I fired the last time just as he fell."

"Like I said, when I first saw the gun, he was coming out of the inside of his coat with it and shooting. He came out shooting. I struggled with him, Lt. Hughes and I, but he broke away and ran. He got away with the gun and jumped over the hedge and started firing point blank at us."

RURAL POLICEMAN WALKER - "I was just leaving the jail when I heard the first shot, then another shot. I was just behind the outside jail door, right close to them. I ran out with my gun drawn. I joined my bother officers and started firing at Morrow because he was shooting at the police."

"When I got down to him, there where he was lying in the street, he had dropped his gun. It was a few inches away from one of his hands. I kicked it further away. I pointed my police pistol at him. He did not resist."

"I saw him force a man out of his car, get into the car and jump out and start running and shooting again, just before one of us brought him down."

CITY POLICE LT. LEWIS - "I was on patrol duty at the intersection of St. John Street and Daniel Morgan Ave., about one-half block from the scene, when I heard several shots. I turned my car into Daniel Morgan Avenue. I saw other police shooting at a man who was running and shooting. He was looking back. He had a gun in his hand. I saw him run to a parked car. He pointed his gun in through a front window and ordered the driver to get out. The man got out. The man with the gun got in. I pulled in and blocked him. When he saw me, he got out. He had his gun. I ducked behind my car and I fired at him."

MAGISTRATE'S CONSTABLE KIMBALL - "I had just driven into the parking lot. I heard shooting. I got out and went to the assistance of my fellow officers. I fired two shots at the fleeing man."

Policeman Walker said, "Morrow's gun had been shot empty when we got to him."

"It was a six-shot .32 S&W.

"Six empty shells were inside."

"That's all it could hold."

"We picked up his empty brass (exploded shells) and his pistol."

"At the scene we examined the pistol, a small gun with brown plastic handles and blued steel barrel."

It bore a "Made in Brazil" marking on one side.

On the other was an engraving of a crouched tiger.

Policemen Hughes, Lamb and Gault said that Morrow indicated no violent tendencies as he was led during their long walk from the courtroom through winding second floor corridors and downstairs toward the jail.

But once, they said, he paused momentarily, glanced back toward the courtroom where he had just been tried, convicted and sentenced, and muttered: "Kangaroo Court!"

Friday night, Rural Policeman Murray Snow said he, Policeman Maynard Miller and Lt. Albert Alverson delivered Morrow to the State Penitentiary and he was confined in the prison hospital.

Morrow Wasn't Frisked

How did Daniel Morrow apparently get into and out of Spartanburg General Sessions courtroom with a loaded pistol hidden beneath his suit coat?

This question was voiced repeatedly by spectators and several others in the crowd milling around County Jail's south side parking lot Friday afternoon.

The explanation, as stated by police and Solicitor John Nolen:

Defendants who are out on bond normally are not searched for weapons when they enter the courtroom to be tried or to plead guilty.

Prisoners who are held in jail until they are tried or plead guilty are relieved of all their possessions and receipted for them, pending their release.

Weapons seized from defendants during investigations are not returned to them unless they are found innocent.

Official indications late Friday afternoon were that security will be tightened in the future.

Sheriff Charles P. Alverson and Solicitor Nolen said Morrow would be charged in either one warrant or four separate warrants with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill upon the four policemen who participated in the shootout. He will also be charged with escaping, they said.

The solicitor said he was taking no immediate action concerning bond for Morrow.

"Nobody has requested a bond for him," he said. "Besides, he is under the 11-month sentence Judge Rhodes imposed upon him today in court."