RAYNAUD, BALESTERI

Posted by Cathy Gowdy on Sunday, December 28, 2008 at 04:34:09 :

Marin Journal
Thursday, April 17, 1913
Page 1

Game Warden War

One game warden was killed and another wounded in a battle with Italian fishermen on San Francisco bay, near Point San Quentin, Wednesday night.

The game wardens, Ernest Raynaud and M. S. Clark, had been watching about the coast all the afternoon, looking for illegal fishing.

They saw a party of Italians, whom they thought were fishing with nets of closer mesh that the law permitted, rowed up to the men, and telling them that their nets were undersized, placed them under arrest.

The wardens got into the fishermen’s boat and headed for the shore. The deputies and Italians soon got into a quarrel, and a fisherman knocked Clark down with an oar, who in some way got overboard, and floated for several hours before he was picked up by Joseph Azuro, a Green Brae citizen, who was passing in a launch. Clark is today in Pate’s ark, at Green Brae, suffering from a wound in his head, made by the rudder of the Italians’ boat, who attempted to kill him after he got in the water by running the boat over him. Clark will be brought to San Rafael as soon as practicable, which may be this evening.

While the two deputies and their prisoners were having trouble another boat containing five Italians came up and engaged in the battle.

Ernest Raynaud was clubbed to death with oars, falling dead in the bottom of the boat. An Italian named Balesteri was shot to death, and lay across the dead body of Raynaud when the boat landed at Meiggs Wharf, San Francisco.

Different versions of the affair are given by the survivors, and it is impossible at this time to tell just how the tragedy occurred. Evidences of the fray do not tally with accounts given.

Sheriff Keating and Deputy Redding were busy nearly all night with the case, and wired all bay towns to look for the fugitives, soon after the fight occurred. Five prisoners were brought from San Francisco today, where they were arrested, when they attempted to land from Meiggs Wharf. Two of the fishermen are wounded, and three escaped.

The Sheriff here had to order extra beds to accommodate the unusual number of prisoners.

The wardens were both young men, and Raynaud was only twenty. All implicated in the deplorable affair will have their preliminary hearing before Judge Magee today or tomorrow.