Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 163, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1920 — 3 KILLED IN TRAIN TRAGEDY [ARTICLE]

3 KILLED IN TRAIN TRAGEDY

TRAIN STRUCK AUTOMOBILE AT WATgR VALLEY RESULTING IN DEATH OF 3. Mrs. John Ahlgrim, of Shelby, her youngest child, and nephew, Frances Firaif, are dead as the result of a tragedy which occurred at Water Valley about three o’clock Wednesday afternoon when northbound Monon train No. 38, due in .this city at 2:51 p. m., struck the automobile in which they were riding, killing them instantly. Two other occupants of the car, a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Sirois and another child of Mrs. Ahiprim, were seriously injured but will not die. The machine was carried a hundred feet or more before it was thrown clear of the track. So far as is known there were no witnesses to the tragedy other than the engineer of the train. According to the story of the two surviving occupants, the engine of the machine stalled just as Mrs. Ahlgrim drove it onto the tracks and she was getting out of the car to crank it when the train struck them. When the train passed through this city it was forty minutes late and it is supposed that it was running at a high rate of speed in order to make up the lost time as it passed through Water Valley. It is said that the engineer has -estimated the speed of the train as being sixty miles an hour when it struck the automobile and that he did not see the car in time to avert the tragedy. The bodies of Mr. Ahlgrim and the two children showed only Slight bruises, all of the occupants of the car remaining in it until it was thrown clear of the tracks. The approach to the tracks at the point where the tragedy occurred is very bad, the view being obstructed and according to the story of the little Sirois girl they neither saw nor heard the train, the noisb from a sawmill which was operating near-by deadening the sound of the train. Mrs. Ahlgrim and the children had left her home at Shelby to go to the home of her father-in-law, Mox Ahlgrim, at Water Valley for a short -visit and were only a short distance from his home when struck by the train. . . Funeral services for Mrs. Ahlgrim and the two children will be held at Lowell Saturday afternoon.