Swept Over the Falls: A Five-Year-Old Lost on a Spokane Bridge
Walking home from Sunday school, Walter Kreitz was struck by a Great Northern passenger train on the Post Street bridge. His body was carried downstream toward the falls and never recovered.
SPOKANE, Wash.—Walter Kreitz, the 5-year-old son of Mrs. C. Kreitz, a widow, was struck by an eastbound Great Northern passenger train on the bridge at Post street shortly after 11 o'clock Monday morning. The body was carried down stream, probably over the falls, and all search for it has so far proved fruitless. Walter, with his brother Willie, aged 12 years, and Elmer and Charles Wick, aged 12 and 10 years, was returning from the Pentecostal Sunday school when the accident occurred.
“The body was carried down stream, probably over the falls, and all search for it has so far proved fruitless.”
The Post Street bridge still carries traffic across the Spokane River within sight of the falls that swallowed a five-year-old boy in 1903. Then, as now, a child's walk home from church could end at a rail crossing with no barrier. The family's search that December morning found nothing — a reminder of how quickly the river could erase a life.
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