“Tommy Gates Displays Magnificent Nerve.”
While serving their terms, on October 27, 1887, in an attempted outbreak at the prison, in which these men participated, the prisoners succeeded in getting hold of the superintendent of the prison, Thomas Gates, familiarly known as Tommy Gates, and threatened to take his life if he permitted the guards to fire on them. Notwithstanding this, he ordered the guards to fire, when one of the Wheaton convicts, one Puebla, thrust a knife first into his shoulder and then into his back, seriously but not fatally wounding him. Barney Riggs, a life-termer, then succeeded in getting hold of a pistol, shot and killed Puebla, and for this was subsequently pardoned out, in response to the almost unanimous sentiment of the Territory. In the emeute four of the prisoners were killed outright, and Tommy Gates’s display of nerve on the occasion goes into history as a heroic example of self sacrifice in the discharge of duty.