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Des Moines, Iowa, February 6th, 1921.

George A. Fosdick, who operates a grocery store at 3201 Forest Avenue, locked up at 9 o'clock,

the usual hour, and started home in his automobile, his daughter, Mary, driving.

They had driven the car into their garage behind a house two doors south of their home

at the southeast corner of 9th and Clark Streets.

As Fosdick locked the garage door, Mary picked up a basket of groceries

they were bringing home and started back via the driveway, intending to walk back down the

front sidewalk to the front door of their home. Her father, instead of following her, cut

across behind the intervening houses and tried to enter through the back door, but found it locked.

Having no key for the rear door, he started up the narrow space between his home and the house on the south, toward the front door, for which he did have a key.

Meanwhile, Mary Fosdick was waiting for her father on the edge of the front porch.

Father, are you coming? She called. As he approached the front door, he heard a command

from behind. Under the impression that it was his daughter trying to scare him, he replied,

Ah, go away! The command was repeated, and still not taking it seriously,

Fosdick kept on walking.

It was then that the two shots rang out,

and Mary rushed to the passageway between the houses.

There she saw her father on his hands and knees. One bandit, short and stocky, withdrawn gun,

bent over him. Two steps away stood another, somewhat taller, with a handkerchief around the

lower part of his face. Both seemed under 20 years of age. Don't shoot him, he's my papa, cried Mary, and rushed toward the armed desperado, screaming.

Without an instant's hesitation, Mary says, the robber leveled the gun at her and fired.

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