Chicago Daily News, Sept 11

GAS FIEND HUNT IS PROBLEM FOR TRAFFIC EXPERT

BY LOIS THRASHER
Special Dispatch from a Staff Correspondent
Mattoon, Ill. Sept. 11 -- The "mad anesthetist" has given this city a greater danger than the sickening gas with which he has been spraying women and children--traffic confusion. While reports from self-proclaimed victims continued to pour in--largely as a result of mass hysteria, according to the police--the city today had its first chuckle after days of tension. The chuckle came from Police Commissioner Thomas V. Wright in his comment on Chicago reports that five squads of state policemen are rushing here to join in the search for the scientific bogey man.

On Way, But--

"The state police are on their way here, all right," Wright commented. "They'll be here this afternoon or tonight. But they're not coming to help hunt our fugitive. They're coming to help solve our traffic problem. Unless something is done about the traffic, somebody may get hurt." Commissioner Wright used the right words. There's a real traffic problem. Every night, citizens gather at the police station with whatever gasoline rations they can gather, then wait. A call from any "victim" produces a mad scramble of vehicles, with the public's cars racing the police squad car to the scene, often overtaking it, which makes things even more jumbled.

What They'll Do.

"We've got to solve this traffic problem," Wright said. "This is how we'll do it. When a call comes in, and the squad car starts out, the state policemen's cars will follow it closely and cut out the sightseers' machines." Wright has become skeptical over recent reports of gas sprayings. "Mass hysteria," he said. "People are beginning to imagine things. I would say that only four of the 31 reported cases are authentic."
Two women who reported they had been gassed last night, one of them while seated in a theater and surrounded by fellow townspeople, were said by examining physicians to show no symptoms of spray attacks. -- Monday, September 11, page 3