Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 71, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1901 — Still Another Runaway Accident [ARTICLE]

Still Another Runaway Accident

And Wm. McElfresh Gets a Badly Broken Leg. •■ 1 1 The long list of runaway accidents in Rensselaer and vicinity, did not end with those of last week as everybody hoped they would. Instead, it is again our unpleasant duty to record another severe accident resulting from one this week. It ocoured in Rensselaer and about 5 o’clock Wednesday afternoon. Wm. McElfresh, a well known resident of the east part of town was hauling corn to market, from his farm in Barkley tp., unloading it at Coen & Brady’s elevator. At the time mentioned, just as he entered the elevator drive-way. leading to the dump, the neck yoke slipped off the end of the .tongue, letting the tongue drop. His horses started to run, and passed through the elevator and out of the east end. Mr. McElfresh was sitting on the front of the load, with his feet hanging down. When the decline at the end of the driveway was reached, he was thrown off and fell on the tongue behind the horses. At the end of the°elevator the team made a short turn and he was thrown to the ground and the front wheel passed over his left leg just above the knee. He was taken to bis home on a stretcher and Dr. Moore called. He found the femur or thigh bone broken, with a jagged and complicated fracture, just above the knee and that the ligaments of the knee were badly bruised and lacerated, and also the membrane covering the knee joint, making a very bad break, and one that will take a long time to heal, and more than likely always give him a stiff knee. The team with the load ran as far as Mr. Beam’s residence on Elm street, where they were stopped by the end of the wagon tongue catching on the stone street, with no damage to team or wagon. Mr. McElfresh is pretty well along in years, which fact, of course will make his injury the longer in healing.