TRAIN KILLS AN AUTOIST.

The New York Times
December 10, 1909

Express Wrecks His Machine and He is Hurled into a Field.

Special to The New York Times.

MINEOLA, L. I., Dec. 9.—William R. Wicks, in an automobile, was run down and mortally hurt to-day at Krugg's Corner on the Jericho Pike crossing of the Long Island Railroad by the Oyster Bay express.  He is said to have been driving at the rate of sixty miles an hour.  He died within an hour at the Nassau Hospital.  His home was at 642 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn.

Wicks was going east on the turnpike, which crosses the track at right angles.  A building somewhat obscures the track from the direction in which the train, due at Mineola at 11:36 A. M., was coming.  No gates guard the crossing.

Wicks, it is understood, was testing a new machine and had it full of ballast.  Hit by the locomotive the car was thrown clear across the tracks and into a field, a heap of wreckage.

Wicks was hurled 20 feet into the air and landed on his head.  His skull was crushed.  The telegraph operator at Mineola was notified to summon the Nassau Hospital ambulance, and the new electric conveyance rushed the injured man there, but the surgeons could do nothing for him.