

Wendel Section Foreman Stages Shooting Scrape
January 31, 1927
San Lopetroni, section foreman for the N. C. O. Railroad at Wendel, was arrested by Sheriff Leavitt Monday on complaint of persons in Wendel that he had shot a man, and was brought to the County Jail in Susanville, where he was booked on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon.
He appeared before Justice Sifford, who placed him under $500 bail, which he was raised and was released for the time from custody.
It seems that Lopetroni and one of his friends, Joe Gionotti, had engaged in a drinking bout, and both were the worse for their encounter with John Barleycorn.
They both lived in the same box car, with a partition between their apartments. As good friends will do sometimes, they started quarreling. Gionotti went into the kitchen and returned to Lopetroni’s room with a huge butcher knife, which he brandished around I the near vicinity of Lopetroni’s person.
After doing his calisthenics with the butcher knife, without doing any bodily injury to Lopetroni, Gionotti returned to his part of the car and Lopetroni slammed the door between seized his gun and fired a shot into the wall and one through the door, near the floor.
The latter shot hit Gionotti in the instep of his left foot and injured it rather badly, though the bullet did not go through his foot. He was brought to Susanville and taken to the County Hospital for repairs.
The Sheriff and District Attorney Nutting went to Wendel and brought Lopetroni back with them.
Lopetroni claims that he had no intention of hitting Gionotti when he shot but just intended to scare him away with his butcher knife. Gionotti refuses to have his friend prosecuted, so it up to the District Attorney to decide whether or not Lopetroni, in self-defense was justified in shooting through the door.