breaking news

This is from the San Francisco Chronicle, June 18, 1891:

HOODLUMS RAID A SALOON ON MISSION ROAD.

The Police Discover the Plunder in a Barn on Bernal Heights.

A gang of Mission hoodlums made a raid last Saturday night upon Hermann's saloon, on the Mission road, carrying away three barrels of beer, which they secreted in a barn belonging to a man named Bell, on the very summit of Bernal Heights. For some reason the circumstances of the theft was kept from the police until Tuesday morning, when Sergeant Burke received knowledge of the affair in an indirect manner, and for his own information made an investigation of the robbery.

Yesterday Sergeant Burke had occasion to visit Bernal Heights to investigate some depredation recently commited there. While taking observations he happened to be in the vicinity of Bell's barn, and something prompted him to take a peep inside, where, to his surprise, he espied the identical three barrels of beer snugly secreted in one corner of the barn.

Satisfying himself that it was Hermann's property the sergeant summoned the owner to identify the property,and at the same time rang in for the patrol wagon to remove it to the Seventeenth-street station as evidence.

During the sergeant's absence, however, the barrels were rolled out of the barn and slid down the steep hillside to the gulch below.

When he returned with Hermann he observed the furrows cut into the ground by the barrels. Hermann and the sergeant descended to the gulch and there the owner fully identified his property.

While in the gulch below the patrol wagon arrived at Bell's barn on top of the hill, accompanied by Officer Gallagher, one of the oldest officers on the force. To get the wagon into the gulch below was out of the question, so the sergeant directed Gallagher to roll the three barrels of beer up the hillside to the wagon, where, with the assistance of the driver, they were loaded into the wagon and transferred to the Seventeenth-street station.