Re: “Police search for gunman,” Touchstones of Nelson, November 11
On the morning of November 5, 1938 my uncle Jim Armstrong was helping me buy a new pair of shoes. I was 10 years old. I was coaxing him to buy me a pair of dressy shoes instead of the serviceable ugly Oxford shoes. Lucky me, I won.
When leaving Fink’s Mercantile, a friend of my uncle’s stopped to talk. Suddenly a siren was blaring and a police car went flying up Ward Street. I overheard someone say “Hugh Armstrong has been shot!”
I interrupted my uncle as to what I heard. He said “We’ll go pick Helen (Hugh’s wife) up and go home to Silver King Road and wait to hear from someone.
We had some lunch and found out he was being brought to Kootenay Lake Hospital and Dr. N.E. Morrison was following him in from Salmo. Dr. Morrison later told us that the bullet picked up a piece of the undershirt, which padded the way past the artery and saved his life. So close and so lucky.
I came to Nelson in September 1928 to live with the Armstrongs. Hugh was my cousin.
Hugh attended several lineups, but because he had no witness, he felt it was fruitless to point the finger at anyone.
Audrey Stevenson
Nelson