Allegedly under the influence of cocaine, Joseph McNeely shot and wounded a police officer named L. L. Wilson in the city of Charlotte in August 1913. Wounded in the exchange, McNeely was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital for treatment. McNeely was under the guard of two police officers, Cyrus Everette Earnhardt (1874-1940) and Isaac Alexander Tarleton (1870-1949), in the early morning hours of August 26 when a lynch mob broke into the hospital ward. The officers claimed to be overwhelmed by the mob and allowed McNeely to be dragged off to the yard outside the hospital where the mob shot him to death. His death certificate records his name as "Joseph McNeal" and places his date of birth around 1894.