Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 252, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 October 1916 — ROADHOG CAUSE OF TRAGEDY? [ARTICLE]

ROADHOG CAUSE OF TRAGEDY?

Report Current That Party of JoyRiders Forced Rogers Park Couple Off Road Near Shelby.' Did a road hog—one of the many that menace life in Lake county—cause the automobile accident near Shelby whi<di resulted in the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. William Ward Hincher, of Chicago?

A report is current today that a party of joy-riders, driving towards Chicago at terrific rate, passed through Shelby shortly before the tragedy and for lack of any other cause it is believed possible that the machine driven by the Chicago manufacturer en route to Indianapolis may have been forced by the joy-riders into the ditch where it somersaulted, burying the two* occupants. The necks of both Mr. Hincher and his wife were broken. Mrs. Hincher also suffered a broken leg and his body was mangled..

A. D. Smith, a young man living at Kniman,' while riding his motorcycle on the Shelby road, came upon the big touring car upside down in the ditch. He discovered the dead bodies of the. man and woman. The man’s watch had stopped at four minutes of *9, indicating that to have been the time of the accident. There was nothing to show that anything had gone wrong with the machine. The road“is very’narrow at the point and the theory that Hincher was forced off the road by a car from the opposite direction appears to be a logical one. The steering gear on the Hincher car was probably broken during the accident and not before it. Mr. Hincher was a thirty-second degree Mason and his wife a member of the 4?. E. S. He was 45 and she 39 years of age.