Fatality results in Mine Accident:
John Morris, 65, Dies Under Trip Car Wheels
John Morris, 65, known familiarly throughout Roslyn as “Casey” died under the wheels of a string of trip cars in the 12th east parting of the Northwestern Improvement Company’s No. 9 mine at Roslyn shortly before noon yesterday.
He had been an employee of the company for 31 years. The fatal accident, which leaved the dead miner’s six children – all under 21 years of age – fatherless, is being investigated today by a state mine inspector.
There were no witnesses to the accident, Harr Boyle, resident engineer of the N. W. I. said, adding that workers at the mine entrance became suspicious when Morris, a rope rider, whose job it was to signal that he had uncoules the empty trip cars and hooked up the loaded cars to be pulled out of the parting, did not signal after the empties had gone down. The workers investigated, Boyle said, and found Morris’ body under the wheels. “He was probably killed instantely,” Boyle said, adding that the most reasonable conjecture as to the cause of the accident was that Morris was riding on the cars and slipped and fell beneath them as they rolled down a grade into the level parting.
Ellensburg Daily Record, Dec. 21, 1946
Contributed by: Marianne Gordon
