RITTER

Posted by Cathy Gowdy on Monday, August 18, 2014 at 07:53:27 :

San Rafael Independent
Monday, April 14, 1930
Page 1

Rifle In Hand Of 13 Year Old Boy Kills Pal At Tocaloma
Boy Scout Fires at Tin Can; Bullet Strikes Friend
No Charges Made

Clifford Teichner, 13-year-old Boy Scout of 80 Pierce Street, San Francisco, stood with a group of his friends at their camp near Tocaloma yesterday firing at tin cans with a small caliber rifle.

“Watch me get that tin can over there,” he said and fired.

Merle Ritter, 15, his friend of 603 Waller Street, fell dead at his feet.

Young Ritter had raised his head just as the Teichner youth fired. The bullet struck at the base of his brain and brought instant death.

Young Ritter, a Boy Scout, the son of Mr. and Mrs. R. L. Ritter, had gone with a party including Teichner, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Earle W. Teichner; Ralph Blake, 18, 29 Sanchez street, and Julius E. Peters, Jr., 13, on the camping party Saturday.

The Teichner boy, according to the story told Marin County District Attorney Henry Greer at San Rafael yesterday, was waiting for breakfast, which his companions were cooking over a camp fire near the station. He picked up his rifle and took shots at various objects, he said.

Seeing the tin can near the tracks the Teichner boy started to “plunk” it with a .22-calibre bullet and, just as he fired, Ritter straightened up and was hit.

His terrified companions enlisted the aid of a young ranch boy, Ed Cannon from Point Reyes. Unable to reach the physician by telephone, Gallagher went for him in his car. It was nearly an hour and a half after the shooting before the doctor could reach the scene. However, he was told the Ritter boy had apparently died instantly, and his examination tended to confirm this.

Teichner was taken to San Rafael for questioning by the District Attorney. He told Greer that he had owned the gun about nine months and had shot it considerably during a camping trip in the Santa Cruz mountains with his family.

One other gun was carried along by one of the older boys in the party, the District Attorney was told. Julius E. Peters, Sr., father of young Peters, said his son had hired a gun to take along, but the father had stopped him from taking it.

Parents of both the shooting victim and Teichner, notified of the accident were grief stricken. They all went to San Rafael, where the District Attorney, holding the shooting was a “regrettable accident,” released Teichner.

“It is just another case of where a boy of 13 should not be allowed to have firearms unless under supervision,” Greer said.

William Houghton, 13, 21 Sala Terrace, San Francisco, shot accidentally through the chest Saturday at Camp Lilienthal, in one of the two other shooting accidents involving boys in this vicinity, was reported unimproved at a hospital here, today.