Tragedy at Pacific School
A ten-year-old boy dies in a freak accident during a schoolyard game.
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.
William Koeller, aged 10 years, a pupil at the Pacific school, was killed yesterday afternoon at 12:45 o'clock by falling on the projecting root of a tree. About twenty boys, including Koeller, were playing ball on Remington avenue, near the Pacific school, during the noonday recess. Koeller was as eager as any of them in chasing the ball as it was thrown around and, while running at full speed, slipped and fell headlong to the ground. Almost instantly he half staggered to his feet, took a few steps and then fell again, where he writhed in agony. James Dyer and Henry Lester, who happened to be passing, carried him to the Walla Walla pharmacy, where he soon expired. Coroner Horton determined the death was caused by a fracture at the base of the skull, sustained when he struck a blunt root protruding from the ground.
“A glance, however, was enough to tell that the lad's end was at hand. His eyes were bulging out of his head and his face had assumed the shade of death.”
Childhood accidents have always marked the local news, but the framing here—focusing on the precise, tragic physical details of the schoolyard—reminds us of how fragile life was before the modern regulation of playground safety.
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