The people who shook their fists and yelled to please the cameraman were just outside the cable barrier, but they were a hundred feet or so east of the mob.
However, the mob took this an incitement to storm the courthouse and lynch Lockett.
General Deweese took a stand in an open space at the approach to the first flight of steps. His men had orders not to shoot unless he fired his revolver twice into the air.
As the leaders of the mob approached the General, he backed about twenty steps, pistol in hand.
When the mob reached him, Deweese grappled with two of them, and struck one over the head with the pistol. The others surged around him and in a moment had mounted the first flight of steps and reached the landing. They bowled over a machine gunner and kicked his gun aside.
Deweese fired the two signal shots. His men opened fire on the mob. People piled up on the steps, some wounded, others dropping to escape the bullets. A dozen or more who had passed the landing before the firing began rushed on up the remaining steps to the front doors, but turned back and ran when the soldiers and deputies who had been stationed inside the doors surged out with rifles and shotguns pointed at them.
A soldier and three policemen were seriously wounded. Some members of the mob had fired shots at the guards. A patrolman guarding Lockett had to have his arm amputated. He claimed that the rioters fired at least 50 shots.
The men guarding the courthouse shot well over 20 people. However, the actual number was much higher, since many rioters didn't go to the hospital. A conservative estimate of the number of rioters shot is at least 50. Six of them died.
The number of injuries and death likely would’ve been even higher had some of the National Guard troops, most of whom were teenage boys with minimal experience, not fired over the heads of the mob.
A newspaper noted that the shootings were "the first time south of Mason and Dixon’s Line that any mob of this sort had actually met the volley fire of soldiers." Civil rights leader W.E.B. DuBois described it as "the second battle of Lexington."
Wanting revenge, rioters broke into pawnshops, seeking more weapons. Several pawnbrokers had kept their places locked all day, the doors barred and the windows shuttered.
Two shops were open. Joe Rosenberg later reported to police that “forty or fifty” pistols had been taken from his shop; Harry Skuller said he had been robbed of “fifty or sixty” weapons. Boxes of cartridges were picked up along with the pistols.
More and more armed people arrived at the courthouse. They waited, reportedly for a shipment of dynamite.
Several hours after the shootings a special train arrived from Camp Taylor. Out of the coaches came 1200 soldiers, many of them WWI veterans. Morrow cited the shootings to call in the military.
The commander, Brigadier General Francis Marshall, declared martial law. The streets leading to the courthouse were cleared within minutes.
Stragglers were moved at bayonet-point. Anyone who tried to argue with the military was immediately beaten into submission with rifle butts.
The area was secured with tanks, snipers, and machine guns. The military organized 12 patrols to guard several other areas of the county, including a local armory and the counties black districts.
The authorities' actions were praised by the NAACP for having enforced the rule of law. There were countless other incidents in which mobs of people had lynched black people, then committed additional acts of mayhem.
One of the worst examples of this was the Tulsa race massacre. In 1921, mobs in Tulsa, Oklahoma murdered dozens of black people and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of a prosperous black neighborhood, which had previously been known as "Black Wall Street". This happened after a black man was accused of raping a white woman.
Lockett pleaded guilty to murdering Hardman. During his sentencing hearing, he said "I know I do not deserve mercy, but I am sorry I committed the crime and I would give anything if the little girl could be brought back to life."
In mitigation, Lockett's lawyer pointed to his honorable discharge (Lockett was a World War I veteran), which stated that his character was "very good". However, the jury recommended a death sentence. Lockett was formally sentenced to death by Judge Charles Kerr for killing Hardman.
Shortly after, Lockett confessed to murdering three women in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. Authorities attempted to confirm these slayings, but lost interest since Lockett was going to be executed anyway. However, his confession appeared to match one murder, that of 55-year-old Sallie Anderson Kraft on a military camp.
The night before his execution, Lockett prayed loudly and sang hymns. He said he was ready to die and had prayed for Geneva Hardman and her family. On March 11, 1920, Lockett, 24, was executed by electrocution at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville. The execution went forward without any problems, and he was dead within seconds.
The man who wrote the first article linked, Joe Jordan joked that "Lynchers don't like lead." He noted that in the aftermath of the suppressed race riot, the numbers of lynchings in Kentucky decreased.