THE FLAGLER TRIBUNE
Bunnell, Florida
Thursday, December 18, 1941

 

Two youths, Robert Wheeler 16, and Glenn Harold Hacker, 17, were instantly killed Wednesday morning by a fast Florida East Coast passenger train at Korona, 8 miles south of Bunnell. The body of Hacker was badly mangled while that of Wheeler was badly cut up.

Officials here found an NNYA card on the body of Wheeler giving a Fort Worth, Texas, address, and it was by this that identity of the youths were established.

The body of Wheeler was shipped this afternoon back to Fort Worth and, it is understood, the body of Hacker will be sent back within a few days.

An investigation here by County Judge H. A. Eisenbach, acting as coroner, pieced together bits of information to learn the story of how the boys arrived at Korona. It developed that a truck driver who resides in St. Augustine picked the two boys up there and brought them to Bunnell. Then they were picked up by Herschel Ford, local Negro trucker and carried to Korona where Ford turned to the left on the old highway to get a load for his truck. It was stated that Ford soon came back on his way back to Bunnell and saw the two youths still standing beside the highway.

Only a short time after they were last seen by Ford they were killed by the train, and it is supposed that just before the bodies were hit, they lay down on the railroad tracks and fell asleep. Engineer Otis Boyd, who was driving the train which hit the youths, said that when he first saw the object on the track he thought it was a cow, but because it was on a curve his range of vision was limited. He said, however, that he believed he saw the foot of one boy move over 100 yards apart.

At the point where the deaths occurred the railway tracks and the highway run parallel, and not over 100 yards apart.

Judge Eisenbach said that he notified police officers in Fort Worth to contact the address given on the NNYA card found on Wheeler. Wednesday evening, the Fort Worth police telephoned Judge Eisenbach that the address had been contacted and gave a description of both boys.

It appears, Eisenbach said, that Wheeler and Hacker and two other youths had left Fort Worth together. One of the four had returned to Fort Worth before they left Texas but the location of the fourth is unknown.