The Coroner Who Left a Body in the Ditch
A freight train killed a man on the tracks near Satus, but the coroner did not reach the scene until Friday, leaving the body where the engine had thrown it.
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.
On the night of September 20th a man was killed on the railroad track this side of Satus. He was standing or walking on the track when he was struck by an extra eastbound freight and knocked into the ditch. His throat was cut and skull crushed, and death must have been instantaneous. Coroner Clark was notified, but for some reason, which will bear inquiring into, he was unable to get on to the caboose which was instructed to pick him up, and as a consequence he did not leave for the scene of the accident until Friday afternoon. All this time the body of the dead man was lying in the ditch where it was thrown by the pilot of the engine.
“All this time the body of the dead man was lying in the ditch where it was thrown by the pilot of the engine.”
Railroad tracks were the region’s arteries and, too often, its killing fields. This item is less about the unnamed victim than about a public officer who allowed a body to lie in a ditch for days. The same questions—who answers for a death on the right-of-way, and how quickly—still surface after modern transportation accidents.
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