Death In Crash - Car Badly Smashed

Detroit, Nov. 21.—One woman was killed and fifteen other persons injured early today when an electric freight car crashed into the rear of a suburban electric car near Birmingham, eighteen miles from this city on the Pontiac division of the Detroit United railway.The passenger car was a theater car bound out to Pontiac from Detroit, and was well filled. It had stopped at the foot of a steep grade in front of the power house at 1 o'clock, when without warning the freight car, also outbound, and which had been following the theater car from Detroit, appeared over the crest of the grade and dropped down the 300-foot incline at terrible speed. It struck the standing passenger car with such force that it telescoped the car for two-thirds of its length.When the freight car stopped its forward end was against the smoking compartment of the theater car.Pontiac Woman Slain.Dead—Miss Harriet Harger, daughter of Charles Harger, Pontiac; head crushed.Injured—C. F. Inch, 214 Park street, Pontiac; Mrs. Houston, 127 South Saginaw street, Pontiac; Mrs. Hattie Sale, 21 Millwood avenue, Pontiac, leg fractured; L. J. Burch, 23 Mathews street, Pontiac; C. J. Kelley, 217 North Saginaw street, Pontiac; J. T. Beach, Pontiac; Mason Shoesmith, Pontiac; Miss Mary Jones, Pontiac; Miss Maud Jones, Pontiac; Dr. Mercer, dentist, Pontiac; Osman Wigg, Pontiac; Mrs. Tucker, Park street, Pontiac, leg broken; Mr. Flemming, St. Thomas, Ont., visiting at the home of Mr. Maus, 239 Perry street, Flemming's lower jaw broken in two places, he was taken to Harper hospital, Detroit; J. A. Maus, 239 Perry street, Pontiac, upper jaw broken; Jack Berry motorman on the freight car, had his throat cut, he was able to be on the street after the accident; David McClellan, conductor on the freight, slightly hurt.Physicians were summoned immediately and it took three hours to extricate the injured from the wreck and dress all of their wounds. It is thought that all of them will recover.In the passenger car the crowd of men and women were nearly all dozing. The collision caught them absolutely unawares for the crash came almost instantaneously with the shouts of alarm sent up by the conductor and motorman of the passenger car, who were down on the ground alongside their coach and saw the freight car come over the hill and thunder down toward the crowded theater car.Plows Through CoachThe freight car plowed through the passenger coach until the front end of the freight struck the bulkhead of the passenger car. There was no escape from death or injury for any man, woman or child caught anywhere beyond jumping distance of the doors.Motorman Berry of the freight car and David McClellan, his conductor, jumped as the impact came, but not quickly enough to escape the wreckage. Berry's throat was slightly cut by a flying splinter and McClellan was bruised by another projectile. McClellan is also a Birmingham man.The cause of the accident appears to have been an insufficiency of the brakes to hold a car on the steep hill."Nothing less than mountain brakes should be used by the D. U. R. on the Oakland county hills," said a spectator. As nearly as can be learned from the street car men, who are not talking freely, the brakes on the freight car were working during that death descent, but the car simply slid to the bottom of the hill despite them.