The Cleveland Police Museum is honored to tell the stories of our Fallen Officers on the anniversary of their End of Watch.
On February 3, 1917, Officer Otto Mosholder was making a routine call at East 22nd and Woodland when he noticed Patrolman Stewart following two men with a push cart full of flour turning into Decatur Court. Believing the flour stolen, the officers questioned the men. As they went to take the cover off the cart to inspect the contents, the two men suddenly pulled revolvers and fired at both patrolmen.
Officers Mosholder and Stewart were both was wounded. Both suspects vanished without a trace. The policemen lay in the street for five minutes before a passerby called the Third Precinct. Officer Mosholder returned to work two months after the incident.
Ten years later, Mosholder transferred to the Bureau of Criminal Identification, where he “filed cards,” learned fingerprinting and became an expert photographer. After nineteen years of feeling twinges in his injured shoulder, Mosholder returned to the hospital, where he succumbed to a persistent infection in his old wound, dying on December 10, 1936.
Officer Mosholder was survived by his wife Marie, a daughter Dorothy Boyett and a granddaughter Constance May Boyett. Services were held at the West Side Masonic Temple.
