Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 56, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1911 — NEAR AUTO VICTIMS. [ARTICLE]

NEAR AUTO VICTIMS.

Machine Turns Turtle But Occupants Escape Serious Injury. There was a miraculous escape from death in an auto accident near the Wm. Coen residence on the stone road north of town Monday evening about 6 o’clock. Thomas Watkins of Indianapolis, manager of a baseball team at Piqua, Ohio, who was visiting his mother at Mt. Ayr, started from Rensselaer to Mt. Ayr in Watkins’ “Cole 30” with John Bicknell and J. M. Miller of Mt. Ayr, and John Madison of Wheatfield. Watkins was driving the car, with Bicknell in the front seat beside him. Miller and Mhdison were in the rear, seat. The rain had made the road slippery, and after leaving the corporation limits Watkins let the machine out, and it was probably running 30 miles an hour when it skidded, and to avoid striking a telephone pole the driver turned the steering wheel so that the machine turned a complete summersault and landed at the edge of the road bottom up. \U the occupants were pinned undeF the top. rivhich was up at the time, and alone saved them ♦rom death or serious injury. Miller crawled out from under the wreckage first and assiste l the others out.. His neck was wrepched slightly and Watkins got on leg twisted a little. Otherwise they were uninjured. The auto had leaped 30 feet by actual measurement, and was quite badly wrecked. One front wheel and one rear wheel was smashed, the glass front broken, top wrecked, etc. Watkins' went to Inlianapolis yesterday on the early morning train to secure repairs fpr the machine.” 1