Pa?e 6 “** TTTE BATTALION 1950 Annual Christmas Safety Edition Friday, December 15, H950
■How Four Teen-Agers Met Death
Actual Case History Shows Tragic Price of Highway Pranks
Elsie didn’t like the loss of the
shaker. To punish the boys, the
waitress pulled the plug on the
pin-ball machine so that nobody
could play,
The fellows all sat quietly on the uncertain.
stools for a minute, “just to show
me they knew how to act,” said
Elsie.
In the crowd was Lawrence
“Sleepy” Muhlenbruck, 18, who has
done considerable chasing around
in cars. He had a 1936 Ford park
ed outside.
Probably packed there at the
same time was Kibsgaard’s Olds.
George Kibsgaard was perhaps
(Editor’s Note: The following
Story,- which appeared originally
in the DesMoines (la.) Sunday
Register, Nov. 13, 1949, is re
printed here as an actual re
port of how four teen-age driv
ers met death. It’s a long story
and not a pleasant one. But it
shows factually and graphically
why we consider traffic safety,
especially among younger driv
ers, a matter that deserves our
attention at all times.)
By GEORGE MILLS
Staff AVriter
Des Moines Sunday Register
Hampton, la.—Eighteen-y e a r -
old Francis Elwood plowed all day
on the Ileilskov farm where he
worked southwest of town.
After a supper of weiners, he
went up to his room to write some
letters. He was tired. He planned
to go to bed early.
He didn’t know that he had a
date with death in three hours.
In northeast Hampton, big
George Kibsgaard also didn’t know
he had only three hours left to
live. George, 18, had helped his
electrician father move a meter in
a house that day.
After supper, George took his
1936 Oldsmobile and went up
town, just as he always had done.
It was so routine that he didn’t
even say goodbye to his, parents.
In west Hampton, little Russell
Jensen, 19 and young-looking for
his age, washed up in the little
backdot 1 house where he lived with
his father.
Ru^s polished cars that day in
the Ford garage. Now he was go- may havq scraped front fenders,
ing to have a bowl of chili at the At least one of them also thought
Skelly lunchroom where the teen- there was something manly about
agers hhng out. speeding down the highway at
Russell similarly had no realiza- night without' lights. Their idea
tion of the fact that the end of his of a good time was to play
life was only hours away. “swerve” with cars going 60 or 70
Lloyd Casey, 18, a big likable miles an hour,
redhead, went home from the Elsie in the luncliroom remem-
Hampton Chronicle where he was bers that on the night of the acci-
working as a printer apprentice: dent “George Kibsgaard and El-
He also thought he would drop over wood were not in here. They
to the Skelly diner after the eve- ,were put in front.”
ning .meal. The march of events It was getting along toward 8
was to claim Lloyd’s life, too, very o’clock, time to go.-
soon. Russ Bonjour, oldest of the
In two other homes, boys ate bunch, brought along some apples
at the family tables, perhaps and gum. j
looked at comic books, talked on
the' telephone, got ready to go • •
out for a while. p or ^ liex ^. half-hour, where
As the minutes ticked away that j 10 y S weT1 ^ allf | w hat they did,
Tuesday night, the cast slowly j 10 hody seems to know. .
gathered for the tragedy in which this is known: About 8:30
four were to die. The question the two automobiles dashed along
came up: '^hajl there be any girls Highway 3 west of Hampton. Kibs-
in on this. No, it was decided. . o-aard, going west, had the Olds
^ 0 wide open at 73.
Speeding east was Sleepy’s car.
In the Skelly lunchroom, mean- Kibsgaard had two passengers and
himself. Muhlenbruck had four
and himself.
At least one car had the lights
off.
Death waited in the pleasant
moonlight night, just east of a
stone farmhouse six and a half
miles west of town.
The highway patrol says one car
was 18 inches over the middle of
the road, the other 14. That’s the
story the marks tell on the con-
Somebody broke a crete. Unless somebody swerved,
a collision was inevitable.
With a tearing impact of metal
on metal and flesh, the two cars
met in a terrific crash. Whether
the drivers didn’t see each other
or were testing each other’s nerve
while, a dozen youths had gather
ed. Russ Jensen had his bowl of
chili. He kidded Elsie Woodley,
the waitress, by telling her it was
hot tomato juice.
The jar with $1 bills and half-
dollars in it, “In Remembrance of
the Boys,” wasn’t out yet. That
was to come later.
Russell Bonjour, 22, played the
pin-ball machine, as several boys
clustered around it. Jensen had a
bottle of pop.
salt shaker.
Kibsgaard’s bluish-green Olds
mobile literally climbed up on
the left side of the Muhlenbruck
car. The Olds flew through the
air. Bodies hurtled from the
seats.
The car landed with a crunch on
the shoulder, with its rear wheels
down in the ditch.
It also landed on top of Francis
Elwood, the boy who was going to
been the best lesson in driving
they ever could have.”
any good to bar young drivers
from the highways. Probably “just
as many would be driving without
drivers licenses as there are now.”
Jane gave an insight into how
the Hampton teen-agers tore
around in cars.
“We would be cruising around
in George Kibsgaard’s car,” she
said. “Pretty soon Sleepy Muhl
enbruck would start following
us. AVe never followed him, he
always followed us.
“We would go out on the high
way and outdistance him, then
double back on a gravel road.
Jane Maneely, whose life may George’s car was faster than
have been saved because she had to si ee py’ s>
The accident toll of four dead
and four injured shook this Frank
lin county seat town to its founda
tions. It also uncovered some
startling things about teen-age
driving in this area.
The condition isn’t peculiar to
Franklin county, however. The
teen-age traffic death rate for the
state is four or five times worse
than that of the adult driver.
even a bigger highway menace write some letters that night and
than Sleepy, but neither of them, go to bed early.
or any of the other boys for that
matter, indulged in liquor.
George, though, had been fined
twice in the last six months for
reckless driving, and once before
in 1948. Sleepy was in. court in
1948 at the same time as George.
The muffler pressed down on. El-
wood’s face, broke his nose/mash
ed in his features and seared the
skin. Undoubtedly unconscious, he
suffocated.
They didn’t even find his body
until one and a half hours later
when a highway patrolman hap-
The two youths several nights pened to turn a flashlight on the he was cold
before had been in a near-crash bottom of the car. He saw El- shock,
with each other out on the high- -wood’s shoe sticking out.
way. At least once before they Kibsgaard died quickly, per
haps immediately. His'face and
head were crushed beyond rec
ognition.
Jensen lived until 7 o’clock the
next morning. He had a fractured
skull and a sdalp wound that bled
interminably. His face was swol-
Teen-age tragedy in Texas! No, this is
not one of the cars involved in the acci
dent described on this page. Two young
citizens of our state became statistics
when tree, steel and flesh cam A together
tq form this scene. Follow the arrows —
they point to what is left of two human
beings. Gruesome? Shocking? Yes. But
it., tells., much., better than words why
every citizen, especially ..ones ..between
the ages of 16 and 25, must face and de
feat the teen-age driving menace. It can
and does happen here.
len, he was cut from flying glass, fracture and severe cuts and abra
and clammy with sions.
He
Lloyd Casey, 18, had a badly cut
throat, cuts on his face, abdominal
injuries, ,a left leg in which the
bone.s were shattered. He died
Friday night.
Sleepy Muhlenbruck had four
fractures in the pelvis, a broken face from the corner
left arm; a right, shoulder blade back toward the ear.
couldn’t drive a car for
months even if the authorities
Would let him.
Bonjour had a broken left arm
and leg, severe facial cuts and
bruises and a sprained left shoul
der. Leon Casey, 16, Lloyd’s broth
er, had a tear in the flesh of his
of one ■ lip
He lost all his upper and lower
front teeth, suffered a crushed nose
and a broken right wrist.
MeHin Numelin, 16, had a possi
ble skull fracture. The left side
of his head was badly swollen.
M. J. Greenfield, the Marhpton
undertaker, said afterward:
“If all the teen-agers in town
could have been out there pick
ing up those boys, it would have
take care of children that night,
said some amazing things in an
interview.
Jane went riding often with
Kibsgaard and Elwood. She
wears Elwood’s motorcycle ring
attached to a chain around her
neck.
“I like reckless driving and I like
speed,” she said frankly.
“It’s only something- like this
that teaches you a lesson, when
somebody awfully close to you is
killed. I don’t think you can learn, practices
only by experience. swerve.
“I was in a motorcycle accident “Rat racing” as described by the
once but that didn’t bother me. high school bobby soxer is one car
(She had a couple of stitches in racing to pass another,
her head and a scar on her leg.) “In swerving, you just swerve
But this accident has jarred me the car down the road, back and
quite a bit.” forth, back and forth, just enough
She isn’t sure, however, but to give it a gentle rock,” she said,
that “this spell” will wear off Jane was along when they had
“The day George got his carbu
retor fixed,” she recalled, “we went
out to see how fast it would go.
Seventy-five was the top. It got
up to 80 1 once but came x-ight back
down.
“It’s just a matter of luck that
I wasn’t along the night of the
crash. If I hadn’t been baby
sitting, I would have.
In describing other teen-age
driving escapades, Jane told of the
of “rat racing” and
and she will crave speed again.
She said she had ridden on a
motorcycle going 105 miles an
hour.
Her top speed in a car is also
105. An adult was driving the car,
incidentally.
“Just cruising along at 55 or 60
on a motorcycle satisfies me per
fectly,” she related. “AVhen it gets
up to 75 or 80, I get a little wary.”
She doesn’t believe it would do
two close calls. Once the teen
agers “nearly hit another car” and
another time almost went into the
ditch.
Still another time she was out
“bushwhacking” with George.
(Bushwhacking is the px-actice of
turning a spotlight on a parked
couple.)
A Hampton youth, who is in
the service now, and Kibsgaard
(See ‘BRAVEST,’ Page 7)
^briuin^ IQ.
nAtvepA
Here are the answers to the quiz on page 5. Score
yourself eight points for each multiple choice question you
get right. Add four points for each correct True-False
question.
1. d. 100 persons. In the last pre-war year, 1941, the death total
was 40,000, or an average of 112 per day. Current trends indicate
that the daily average now is appi-oximately the same.
2. c. clear. Note that this question refers to fatal accidents.
Most of us have learned to fear snow, x-ain and fog, and we di-ive ac
cordingly. There are many minor mishaps in such weather, but because
few of us drive at high speeds under these conditions, fatal accidents
occur more rarely than one would suspect.
3. b. 18 to 24 years. Recent figures indicate that the most dan
gerous ages are 18 and 19; that drivers under 20 and over 60 have the
highest accident rates.
4. c. twenty to thirty feet. The Uniform Vehicle Code specifies
30 feet. Vax-ious states specify varying distances between 18 and 30
feet. Your answer is correct if you checked c. Now check one thing
more—your brakes!
5 ' c. the pedestrian. He is legally entitled to continue his prog
ress uninterrupted and drivers must wait for him even though they
now have the green light or GO sign.
6. d. is quadrupled. The energy in a moving body increases not
in direct proportion to speed, but as the square of the speed. At 40
miles per hour, therefoi-e, it takes four times the braking distance to
stop the car that it would at 20. At 60 miles an hour it would take
nine times the distance.
7. c. ten stories high. AVhenever you ax-e tempted to speed, think
of this gx-aphic illustration. If you should hit a telephone pole, a
culvert, or any other solid object at that speed you and your car
will be smashed as irrepax-ably as if you had driven off the top of a
ten-story building.
8. f. 720 feet. As speed is increased, the. car requires an in
creased turning i-adius. This radius increases as the square of the
speed. Thus, when speed is doubled, the safe turning x-adius is quad
rupled; when speed is tripled the safe turning radius is nine times
longer. An appreciation of these facts will explain many accidents
on cui-ves.
9. c. within the assured safe distance which you can see. Road,
light, weather and traffic conditions vary greatly, making 50 miles an
hour safe at times and 20 miles an hour dangerous at others. No
matter how straight the road, how good the car or how dry the pave
ment, if headlights cax-ry only 200 feet you must drive in the dark at
a speed which will allow you to stop, in an emergency, within 200
feet. Likewise, in daylight, you must drive at a speed which will
allow you to stop in time should the car ahead stop suddenly, should
another car emerge suddenly from a side x-oad, or should a child dai’t
suddenly into the road ahead of you.
10. d. no apparent defects. Many drivers, after an, accident, will
insist that the gas pedal stuck, or that the brakes suddenly failed or
that something else went wrong. Actually, more than 90 per cent of
all vehicles involved in accidents are found to be in apparently good
condition with no major defects noted in steering, bx-aking, lighting, etc.
11. FALSE Other and more serious hazai’ds become a factor in
driving at night. About 60 per cent of all traffic accidents occur during
the hours of darkness when thex-e is only about 25 per cent of the
traffic on the roads. When the sun goes down, cut your, speed down.
12. FALSE Approximately 90% of all accidents involve male
drivers. Of course, there are more male drivers than female drivex-s,
and on an average they dx-ive many more miles each year; thus, they
ax-e exposed to more hazai'ds.
13. FALSE Carbon monoxide gas is odorless. You can’t see
it, Smell it or taste it, so beware.
(14. FALSE The “one-dxnnk” driver may be as dangerous on the
roaq as the enebiiate because even a slight exhilaration may cause him
to fake chances. Studies indicate that one or two drinks definitely
impair one’s driving ability.
15. FALSE The majority of accidents are caused by diivers with
a year or more of experience at the wheel.
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Imitation is one of the basic im
pulses of human life. From earliest
infancy man has learned the ways
of life and the paths of progress by
imitating others. The child learns to
walk as the fledgeling learns to flv
-r-by imitating its parents.
The impulse to imitate others is
strongest in infancy. That is why
the little boy in the picture tries to
walk in his daddy's shoes.
Children learn to walk in their
parents' footsteps in many ways.
They acquire their habits, their
mental attitudes and their sense of
values mainly from their elders.
And these are the things that will
most largely determine their char
acters and shape their courses in
the years to come.
This makes it all-important for
people to walk uprightly before
their children. Above all, parents
should teach their children the de
pendence of all life upon God, and
the value of religion and the Church
as the guardian of man's spiritual
existence. And this must be done,
line upon line and precept upon
precept, in practice as well as in
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THE CHURCH FOR ALL . .
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The Church is the greatest lector on earth lor the
building ot character and good citizenship. It is a store
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are four sound reasons why every person should attend
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A&M CHRISTIAN CSURCH
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9:45 A.M.—Sunday School
10:50 A.M.—Morning Worship
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7:f5 P.M.—Evening Worship
9:30 A.M—Bible Class #
10:45 A.M.—Worship Service
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9:30 A.M.—Aggie Coffee Club
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11:00 A.M.—Morning Worship
6:30 P.M.—Evening Services
6:30 P.M.—Student League
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800 S. College Ave. Bryan, Texas
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Wednesday Vespers—7:30 p.m.
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The Rev. Wm. C. Petersen, pastor
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11:00 A.M. 1 —Morning Worship
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