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11 MAY 1897 · THE LAKE SHORE YARDS, WEST SIDE
Patrolman Oscar Waldemar Christensen was shot and killed on 11 May 1897 while investigating vandalism in the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway yards on the city's west side. A detective of that railroad was in the yards arresting hobos, and shots were fired; when Christensen approached, the detective commanded him to halt, and when he did not, a bullet from the detective's revolver — a .44-caliber handgun, in the memorial record — struck him. He died a short time later. He had served with the South Bend Police Department for a little over a year, after four years as a guard at the state prison at Michigan City, and he was survived by his wife. He is buried in City Cemetery.
The prosecution that followed was the era's great South Bend murder case, and its disposition was an acquittal. The detective, thirty-six years old, was charged with second-degree murder. The case was taken on a change of venue to LaPorte County and tried three times; at the end of it a jury acquitted him of manslaughter. The two national memorial records that carry the case differ on its final step, and the difference is printed rather than reconciled: the Indiana Law Enforcement Memorial's account gives the three trials and the acquittal, while the Officer Down Memorial Page classes the shooting as inadvertent and records that, after two mistrials, the charges were dropped. Neither record names the detective. On what this section exists to record the two agree: the man was charged with murder, tried more than once away from home, and never convicted.
Sources:
- Indiana Law Enforcement Memorial, fallen-officer record for Patrolman Oscar Waldemar Christensen (incident of 11 May 1897)
- Officer Down Memorial Page, Officer Oscar W. Christensen — the divergent account noted in the entry