TRAIN RUNS INTO CROWD, KILLS THREE

VICTIMS TO ESCAPE ONE TRAIN STEP IN FRONT OF ANOTHER.

In Addition To the Dead, One is Fatally and Two Others Are Seriously Injured.

Special To The News.

Massillon, Ohio, Oct. 17.---A Wheeling and Lake Erie passenger train tonight plowed into a party of men and women returning to their homes in Somerdale, Ohio, from the Tuscarawas County fair, at Canal Dover, five miles south of here, killing three people outright, injuring one fatally and two seriously and leaving but one man to spread the alarm and call assistance. This man, John Miller, aged 29, sprang upon the rear platform on the caboose of a rapidly passing train and informed the crew, who sent the special train from Brewster, two miles away, which brought the dead and injured to this city.

The dead:

JOHN ABEL, 28.
MISS MARIE SMITH, 16.
MRS. LENA SMITH, 22

Fatally Injured:

Miss Grace Abel.

Seriously Injured:

Mrs. Cora Miller, 27.
Clifford Smith, 22.

The accident occurred near the Wheeling and Lake Erie depot at Harmon. The party of seven had gone to Harmon from Canal Dover to catch a train to their homes in Somerdale. Rather than wait about the depot an hour and a half until the train came, they decided to walk up the track to Brewster, the terminal, two miles away. There are tow tracks at this point and when an eastbound freight train came along they stepped onto the westbound track. The rear of the passing freight prevented their hearing the approaching train from the rear and before they looked around it cut them down like grass before a scythe.

John Miller, who escaped injury, told the story tonight as he sat in the hospital as he awaited the outcome of an operation on his wife.

Dallas Morning News, Dallas, TX 18 Oct 1912
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Transcribed by Linda Horton. Thank you, Linda!