In the early morning of January 15, 1911, a White mob abducted three Black men, Eugene Marshall, Wade Patterson, and Jim West, from the Shelby County Jail and, despite reports that police were aware of the threat of mob violence, law enforcement failed to intervene. The mob dragged the men to a bridge over Clear Creek and hanged Marshall and Patterson; when the rope broke as Patterson was being hanged, the mob severely beat and shot him to death. West was injured but escaped and reportedly fled the county. Later that morning, Marshall's body was found hanging from the bridge and Patterson's body was found nearby in the creek. All three had been accused of separate offenses: Patterson and West of offenses against White women at a time when such accusations aroused violent mobs, and Marshall of killing a Black woman, though local accounts indicate he was likely lynched because the mob mistook his identity. A grand jury investigation followed, but no one was held responsible. On October 2, 1901, a mob of armed White men hanged nineteen-year-old Clarence Garnett and fifteen-year-old Jimbo Fields, two African American teenagers, from the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad trestle over Clear Creek after they had been accused of murdering a White man who drunkenly tried to enter Jimbo's home. Police had arrested them and held them at the Shelby County Jail, but a White mob entered the unguarded jail, broke down the door, abducted them, and marched them 500 yards to the site of their deaths. Later, a Black man incarcerated at the jail said he knew some of the mob participants but had been threatened into silence, and Jimbo's mother was threatened to leave town. Like nearly all victims of racial terror lynching in these cases, the five victims were killed by White mobs that never faced prosecution.