Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 219, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 September 1912 — RISKS LIFE TO SAVE CHILD [ARTICLE]

RISKS LIFE TO SAVE CHILD

Young Baseball Player Performs Heroic Deed at Florence, ... Florence, N. J. —Leon Horner, fast young infielder of the local baseball team, is hailed as hero for a bit of sheer daring and risk of his life in

saving little Loretta Bains from sure death under the wheels of a shifting engine at the R. D. Wood iron foundries, where he is employed. Horner was riding on the footboard at the front of the engine when he saw the child just ahead on the tracks apparently rooted to the spot in her terror. By a powerful dash he outdistanced the engine, and reaching the frightened child tossed her from the track. At the same instant his feet slipped and he tumbled head first between the rails. Unable even with the emergency brakes to instantly stop the heavy train, the engineer saw Horner rolled under the footboard, which in a shifting engine replaces the cowcatcher, and as he brought the train to a standstill, dropped in terror from the cab, expecting to find the young hero mangled beneath the wheels. Horner was far from dead, however? By a deft movement, as the locomotive rolled him over and over, he had managed to grab the running board, and with his body dragged beneath tbe trucks he held on as the engine bumped him over the ties. When they extricated him fellow workmen found his legs badly lacerated and his ankles sprained, but aside from these injuries, which Horner mourns because 'they will keep him from the baseball diamond for several weeks, he was unhurt.