A midnight mistake between two friends turned fatal one night in 1903.
Local farmer named Tim Morris (1863 -1903) set out on foot toward his family farm three miles southeast of Newcomerstown, Ohio, on the night of Friday, June 12, 1903, after a day of heavy drinking in town. Clouded by severe intoxication and by pitch blackness along the rural roads, Morris completely lost his bearings. Stumbling through the dark, he mistook the isolated homestead of his young neighbor, Elmer Haver (1878-1945), located roughly two miles outside of town, for his own home.
Shortly before midnight, Elmer and his wife, Harriett “Hattie” Mae Pope Haver (1877-1958), were startled awake by the jarring sound of someone violently attempting to force open their front door. Demanding to know who was outside, Haver called into the darkness, but received no answer as footsteps retreated into the yard. Minutes later, the silent prowler returned to the back of the house, rattling the kitchen door. When Haver shouted another stern warning, a disoriented voice blurting out “money!” echoed from the dark porch, prompting Haver to fire a warning shotgun burst through the lower panel of the door to drive the intruder away.
Undeterred by the blast, the intruder circled the house and raised the sash of the bedroom window, and attempted to climb directly into the couple’s dark bedroom. Terrified for his wife’s safety, Haver aimed his gun at the shadowy figure silhouetted against the window and pulled the trigger point-blank. The heavy load struck Morris directly in the right side of his abdomen, sending him collapsing to the ground outside with a painful groan.
Rushing outside, Elmer and Hattie were horrified to discover that the bleeding intruder lying in the dirt was no hardened burglar, but their friend and neighbor, Tim Morris. Together, the distraught couple carried Morris into their home and frantically summoned a doctor from Newcomerstown. Although Morris remained conscious, he was far too intoxicated to explain his actions, and he succumbed to his internal injuries within three hours. An undertaker was called to transport the body to his mortuary before final burial arrangements.
As news of the shooting swept through the community, local residents recalled that this was not the first time Morris’s heavy drinking had led to a dangerous midnight intrusion. Twelve years earlier, during a bitter winter night in 1891, a befuddled Morris had gone on a similar spree in Port Washington, losing his hat, gloves, and horse. Wandering in the freezing cold to the home of another family at 2:00 AM, he unlatched the front door and stood stirring the fireplace grate, believing he was in his own home.
The tragic event cast a heavy gloom over the entire community, leaving Elmer Haver deeply grief-stricken over taking a neighbor’s life. However, neighbors and officials recognized that Haver had fired strictly out of midnight panic and self-defense. Following an investigation into the shooting, the official coroner’s inquest reached a final conclusion, issuing a verdict that declared the killing of Tim Morris to be a case of justifiable homicide. The incident remains a harrowing turn-of-the-century tale of how excessive drinking and severe disorientation transformed an innocent mistake into a fatal tragedy.
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© Noel B. Poirier, 2026.
