Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 July 1877 — Youthful Depravity. [ARTICLE]

Youthful Depravity.

One night last week a passenger train on the Long Island railroad left Jamaica for Long Island City, and, when crossing High bridge, a structure thirty feet high, the locomotive struck an obstructiou on the track, which it jumped over, alighting on the rail again, as did ten cars following—the eleventh pushing the obstacle from the rails. Upon examination it was discovered that a bar of iron had been placed across the track and fastened by a log of wood. Thomas Kelly, a lad of 15, was arrested, and confessed that he and three others had placed the obstruction upon the bridge for the purpose of throwing the train over into the creek so that they might plunder the dead and wounded. They calculated that at least twenty people would be killed. Kelly’s father is serving a life sentence in Sing Sing prison for murder.