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The ''Pensacola Journal'' reported that the guards were overpowered:
{{cquote|''Overpowering Desk Sergeant M. J. Murphy and binding Turnkey Chas. Simpson with a rope, an organized and masked mob of about fifty men took Dave Alexander, colored, confessed murderer of Police Office R. J. Carter [sic], from the city jail at 4 o'clock yesterday morning and hanged him to the cross-arm of an electric light pole in the plaza, just north of the Chipley monument, completing the work of lynching him by firing a fusillade of shots at him, fifteen of them entering the body.''|20px|20px|"Dave Alexander Taken From City Jail by Mob and Hanged." ''Pensacola Journal'', April 6, 1909.}}
However, the next day's ''Journal'' reported that John Magnus, another prisoner in the jail, claimed that the mob members were not masked, and that the jail guards surrendered Alexander willingly.
==References==