On the evening of Friday February 22, 1889, two masked men boarded the engine of Train No. 17 as it pulled away from Pixley Station and at gunpoint forced engineer Peter Bolenger and fireman C.G. Elder to stop the train two miles south of the station. They marched the engineer and fireman back to the express car, threw a bomb under it that damaged it slightly, and ordered expressman J.R. Kelley to open the safe or the engineer and fireman would be killed. When two passengers, Charles Gabert and Ed Bentley, a Modesto constable, came forward to investigate the delay, one shotgun blast killed Gabert and another seriously wounded Bentley. After taking loot reported at between $400 and $3000, the robbers ordered the engineer to pull out and went off to the east. No one was ever arrested or charged, and although officers and citizens searched in all directions and suspicions fell on the Daltons, John Sontag, and Chris Evans, all had alibis. This was the first of three serious train robberies in Tulare County.