Story
Community & everyday lifeA Doctor’s Intervention at Benton, 1935
A December 1935 report placed a Benton physician at the center of David Shaffer’s capture after a car crash.
On December 30, 1935, the Shamokin News-Dispatch reported that David Shaffer had been taken into custody after a car crashed into a bridge at Benton. Dr. W. F. Confair, a physician in the town, treated Shaffer’s injuries and restrained him until state police arrived. According to the report, Shaffer was then taken to the Bloomsburg hospital under police guard.
The newspaper connected the search to an October 12 shooting in which Bertha Shaffer had died and Corporal William Bloom of the local state police had been badly wounded. Its account described Bloom still receiving care at the Shamokin hospital. A separate item on the same page announced plans to take him to Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia for further treatment.
The capture did not settle the questions that followed it. The same page discussed intended prosecution, while Bloom’s treatment continued. A reported arrest was not a verdict, and a proposed hospital transfer did not establish his eventual recovery.