FOUR RUN OVER BY AUTO; ONE IS DEAD
Picnickers Jolted Out of Truck Are Victims of Following Car
OFFENDERS SPED AWAY.
Accident Occurs Near Martin City as Party Is Returning to Kansas City.
JOHANNA FRANKLIN, 15 years old, 1514 Myrtle avenue; left hip broken; succumbed from internal injuries at the General hospital at midnight.
The Injured
Ruth Madick, 19 years old, 2040 Cypress avenue; right leg wrenched, bruised on the side of the head and internal injuries; condition serious.
Edward Relford, 17 years old, 1803 Kensington avenue; right hand bruised, back sprained and nervous shock; not serious.
Robert Ayers, 19 years old, Nineteenth street and Myrtle avenue; bruised on face and body; may have internal injuries; not serious.
Edward Relford, 17 years old, 1803 Kensington avenue; right hand bruised, back sprained and nervous shock; not serious.
Robert Ayers, 19 years old, Nineteenth street and Myrtle avenue; bruised on face and body; may have internal injuries; not serious.
Two young men in a motor car, believed to be students of Missouri university, early last evening, near Martin City, Mo, ran over several of a party of picnickers who had been jolted from a motor truck, seriously injured four, one of whom died later, and then plunged down the road in their big black touring car without offering assistance or disclosing their identity. The accident happened at about 8 o'clock.
All of the injured were brought to General hospital in Kansas City. Miss Johanna Franklin, 15 years old, of 1514 Myrtle avenue, was the most seriously crushed by the wheels of the car. She died at midnight of internal injuries and shock. She was a student at Central high school, and is said to have been a talented musician for one of age.
Miss Ruth Madick, 19 years old, 2040 Cypress avenue, was also dangerously injured but she may live. She sustained a wrenched hip, head bruises and internal injuries, the seriousness of which had not been determined that night. Edward Relford, 17 years old, 1803 Kensington avenue, was bruised about the hands and body and is suffering from nervous shock, and Robert Ayers, 19 years old, Nineteenth street and Myrtle avenue, sustained face and body bruises and possibly internal injuries.
According to a story told by the injured boys, fourteen boys and girls yesterday "chipped in" and hired a motor truck to take them to a grove beyond Martin City where they spent the afternoon picnicking. After they had lunched, the party, composed of nine boys and five girls, started home and near Martin City they were approached from behind by a large touring car. Two young men who said they were college students and lived at the Densmore hotel were in the front seat. They began to "jolly" with the girls in the motor truck.
"Get out of that old wagon and give us a chance," they called. "We'll show you a better time than you can have with that bunch." Then they produced a camera and took snapshots of the van and its occupants. The picnickers soon tired of these attentions and the van driver was told to "speed up." He did so. Suddenly as the truck encountered a rough place in the road, the end gate became unfastened and two boys and two girls were spilled out almost under the front wheels of the pursuing touring car.
"It went right over us," Edward Relford said last night, as he lay swathed in bandages at the hospital. "The girls screamed. I guess I yelled, too. We were all jumbled up in a mess. The car wobbled around, I think, as it went over us. A fellow gets kind of rattled being run over that way. When I came to, some of the boys had me out on the grass working over me. But Glover got the number of the touring car. It was their fault, crowding us from behind. The old truck wasn't intended to to keep ahead of a high speed automobile. That's how we got jolted out. I am lucky not to have had any bones broken."
The injured were given emergency treatment at Marten City and attended to by Dr. B. M. Colby at the General hospital. Parents of the injured and other members of the party visited them last night. No trace of the occupants or of the car had been found last night.
All of the injured members of the party said the boys, whom they took to be students of Missouri university, from remarks they made, cut around the van after bumping over the bodies and disappeared down the road in the direction of Kansas City.
The police made an effort to locate the youths and the car last night, but were not successful up to an early hour this morning. The Missouri statutes make it a penal offense for a motorist to run away without disclosing his identity after injuring a person.