Four Dead at the Two-Mile Trestle, and a Verdict That Names No One
A coroner's jury concludes that an overland train was wrecked by unknown hands, leaving an engineer and three privates dead and the community without an arrest.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The inquest on the bodies of Engineer Clerk and Privates Dugan, Luberdeen and Clarke, who were killed by the wrecking of the Eastern overland train last Wednesday afternoon, was concluded this afternoon. After two hours' deliberation the jury returned a verdict finding that the men "came to their death by a railroad accident at the two-mile trestle on the 11th inst., caused by a person or persons unknown."
“came to their death by a railroad accident at the two-mile trestle on the 11th inst., caused by a person or persons unknown.”
In 1894, a fatal train wreck could end with a verdict that blamed "persons unknown," even as the Pullman strike made every railroad line a flashpoint. Modern investigations still wrestle with how to assign responsibility when the cause of a disaster is ambiguous.
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