KILLED AT THE EDGAR THOMSON
DISTRESSING FATAL ACCIDENT TO A FORMER JOHNSTOWN MAN
Mrs. Harriet Champeno, widow of the late John Champeno, of the Thirteenth Ward, left on Way Passenger yesterday afternoon for Braddock in response to a telegram stating that her son Edward, of that place, had been fatally injured at the Edgar Thomson Works. In the evening, another telegram was received, stating that Mr. Champeno was dead.
The details of the accident are the most distressing that have been recorded from the Braddock Works for many months. It happened in the engine room of Furnace B and E, of the Edgar Thomson series, where Mr. Champeno was employed as first engineer. He was standing on the bedplate of one of the large engines filling the lubricator with oil, when he slipped and fell. His legs extended into the immense groove where the big flywheel revolves and the great wheel caught his lower limbs, the left leg being crushed to a pulp from the knees to the trunk. The lower part of his body was terribly lacerated, the femoral artery being completely severed, protruding fully six inches and thus the attending physicians helped to keep him from bleeding to death. The right leg was broken at the ankle and both bones fractured above the knee and lacerated at the hip. It was found that amputation of the worst injured limb would be impossible on account of the high laceration, and the physicians gave the opinion that the injured man would die as soon as ______ set in.
Mr. Champeno did not lose consciousness and knew all his friends when they called to c___ consoling words. It signed to his fate _____ bade all good bye saying he knew he would have to die, and received the last rites of the Catholic Church at the hands of Rev. Father Hickly.
Mr. Champeno was raised in Johnstown, and was a mere thirty years of age. As a boy and a young man, he worked for the Cambria Iron Company, and during the balmy days of the now defunct Mineral City Band was one of its members and had numerous bands here who will be sorry to learn of his band ending. He leaves a wife and two children, the youngest being a babe but two weeks old. Besides his immediate family, Mr. Champeno is survived by his mother and several sisters, Mrs. William Rosensteel of Braddock, and Mrs. Michael Quirk, wife of the Braddock hotel-keeper, being two of them. He left Johnstown seven or eight years ago to tend bar for his brother in law, but had been employed at the Edgar Thomson for several years. |
