Pittsburg Dispatch

A Young Italian Instantly Killed by an Electric Wire on THE DAY SET FOR HIS MARRIAGE
Touch of the Fatal Current and His Form Became Rigid.

MA TO THE TRAGEDY.
The Wire Insulated in the Most Perfect Manner Known to Science.

A young New York Italian leaned from a window last evening and touched an electric light wire. Instantly his form stiffened in death, and a moment later fell to the ground. The young man was to have been married later in the evening.

[SPECIAL TELEGRAM TO THE DISPATCH.]
New York, May 17.—Sebastian Yppolito, a young Italian, who had planned to make this his wedding day, laid hold of an electric light wire for support in front of 167 Broadway, where he was at work at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, and a moment later he fell dead at the feet of the passing throng. A current more intense than the one which it is designed to use to kill Kemmler passed through his body and to the ground by way of an iron bar fastened to the iron front of the iron building upon which Yppolito's foot was resting. Only two or three, as far as known, witnessed the tragedy, and they say that the man's death was instantaneous.

KILLED WHILE AT WORK.
Yppolito was a bootblack, 22 years old, and he lived at 65 Mulberry street. He had a fruit stand beneath the stoop of the building 165 and 167 Broadway, and he paid for the privilege by keeping the windows clean. At the time he met his death he had been at work for about 15 minutes washing the windows of the Inter-State National Bank, which occupies the second floor. He had cleaned the large south window, and partly washed the corresponding one north of it.

He stood upon the stone sill, about 10 inches broad and the water running down wet the soles of his shoes. He stopped once or twice to lean over and look down at his stand under the stoop, which he had left in the charge of a young boy. To do this he had to lean out a little way from the building, for a swinging awning, which at times was pulled up to within a few inches of the wall, somewhat interfered with a clear view.

The last time he turned to look down he slipped slightly, according to the best information available, and swinging around so that he almost faced the street he stepped with one foot upon an iron rod about one inch square which projects from the building to support a swinging sign.

IT WAS INSTANT DEATH.
At the time he put up his left hand and instinctively clutched one of four electric light wires which enter the building just north of the window at which he had been at work. Instantly his frame grew rigid. He shivered and his face became set; but there were no convulsions and no expressions of pain. A little curling thread of blue smoke rising from the man's hand where it grasped the wire drew the attention of those who were looking more at his attitude. When they saw it they suddenly realized that they were watching a tragedy. Before a man could move or an outcry could be made it was all over.

In a very few seconds—less than a quarter of a minute—the figure which, statue-like, stood clutching the wire, suddenly collapsed and pitching headlong to the steps which lead from the sidewalk a few feet below to the lunchroom in the basement or first floor. The current which killed him came from a wire protected by the very best insulation now in use. It was a wire heavily covered with black insulation, than which nothing better is known to science for overhead wires.