Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 180, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1912 — MAN KILLED BY FREIGHT CAB DOOR. [ARTICLE]

MAN KILLED BY FREIGHT CAB DOOR.

E. B. Bowser Loses Life While Stealing Ride After Ignoring Warning of Brakeman. Edwin B. Bowser, aged 37, a son of Levi Bowser, a member of the State Soldiers’ Home, was found with a car-door lying on him and his head crushed in a box car on the Moiibn railroad, between Surrey and Fair Oaks, Sunday, morning at 4:30 o’clock. Evidently the man had not been dead long when found, because the blood was sJJII fresh and the brakeman who found him, H. M. Thompson, of Lafayette, had warned him not to get into the car at Monon because he said it was dangerous. It was loaded with iron pipes. Ignoring the warning Bowser got into the car after the brakeman left, Went to one end and probably went to sleep. A jar of the train overturned a heavy car door that was standing in the end of the car, and it fell and struck Bowser on the head, crushing the skull and killing him instantly. When the freight train, northbound No. 74, stopped between Surrey and Fair Oaks, Brakeman Thompson glanced into the car as he went by and saw Bowser. The man’s body 'Was taken to Fair Oaks and turned over to the coroner, who pronounced accidental death. The father, Levi Bowser, was notified of his son’s death by Monon oflicials here. C. L. Benhan, of the Evans undertaking establishment, was sent to Fair Oaks and took the body to Lafayette last night , The man’s father said that his son should have come to Lafayette last Thursday, where he had been offered .a position in a hotel, but that he had not made his appearance. He said that his son was of a roving disposition. He formerly lived at Fort Wayne. . > The body was Identified by a letter found in his pocket, written by the man’s father. Mr. and Mrs. Frank Borntrager returned to their home in Ft Wayne to< day after attending the funeral of her father, M. W. Reed, yesterday.