AUTOS KILL WOMAN AND 3 CHILDREN

The New York Times
November 21, 1922

Three Drivers Arrested After Accidents; One Chauffeur Speeds Away.

MOTOR TRUCK DRIVER DIES

One of Day's Victims, a Woman, Crippled With Rheumatism, Run Down by Taxicab.

Three children were killed by automobiles on the city streets yesterday. William Hagen, 10, of 215 West Sixtieth Street, was struck and instantly killed by a touring car at Amsterdam Avenue and Sixtieth Street. He was returning from school, and he started across the street to a candy store. James Black, 229 Columbus Avenue, the driver of the car, was arrested on a technical charge of homicide.

A chauffeur who sped south on Claremont Parkway and escaped struck and killed 8-year-old Julius Newman at Washington Avenue, who was crossing the street on his way from school. Witnesses told the police that the driver of the car hesitated a moment after the accident and then increased his speed.

Little Josephine Beatty, who was known in the neighborhood where she lived as "Tootsie," did not go to school yesterday on account of a sore throat. In the late afternoon she went down to play in front of her home at 285 East 135th Street. She was struck and killed by an auto truck driven by William M. Gors, of 184 Franklin Avenue, Brooklyn. Gors, overcome with grief, was taken to the Alexander Avenue station charged with homicide.

Frank Lysy, 39 years of age, of Rockaway Road, Jamaica, Queens Borough, died in the Flushing Hospital last night from a fracture in the skull, sustained on Friday, when a motor truck he was driving skidded and overturned on Union Turnpike, near Flushing.

A man 70 years old, believed to be Johann Cragin of Chicago, was taken to New York Hospital last night with internal injuries and a fracture of the skull, received when struck by a taxicab at Broadway and Nineteenth Street, by Patrolman Murray of the East Twenty-second Street Station. Anthony Anato of 79 Baltic Avenue, Brooklyn, the driver of the taxicab told Patrolman Murray he tried his best to avoid the mishap. The injured man had $334.41 in his pockets. The name Johann Cragin appeared on a letter found in a pocket. It was written by Carl Thiel of the Church of the Angels in Chicago, in which Cragin was a communicant.

Mrs. Lena Packer, 45 years old, of 155 East Forty-seventh Street, was knocked down at Central Park West and Sixty-third Street by a taxicab operated by Joseph Aronkoff of 756 Union Avenue, the Bronx. Mrs. Packer had alighted from a southbound Eighth Avenue car when she crossed into the path of the automobile.

Patrolman William Kennedy of the West Sixty-eighth Street Station lifted the woman into the taxicab and took her to Roosevelt Hospital. She died an hour later while under an operation being performed by Dr. Knapp for a fractured skull. Aronkoff maintained the accident was unavoidable, as Mrs. Packer had run in the direction of the sidewalk. This statement was disputed by Dr. G. H. Patchen of 13 Central Park West, who identified the body. He said that it was impossible for Mrs. Packer to run, as she was crippled with rheumatism. He said that she had been taking treatment at his office. Aronkoff was held on a technical charge of homicide.