The Brattleboro Daily Reformer

FLAGMAN GETS ONE YEAR.
Employee of Wrecked Bar Harbor Express is Guilty.
NEW HAVEN, Conn., Jan. 28.—
Charles H. Murray, flagman of the Bar Harbor express, which was wrecked by the White Mountain express on the New York, New Haven and Hartford railroad at North Haven on the morning of September 2 last, and who had pleaded guilty of manslaughter after a coroner's finding of criminal responsibility, was sentenced to one year in the county jail, the sentence to be suspended and Murray to be in the care of the probation officer, by Judge Shumway of the superior court here.
In the wreck passengers' eyes were lost.
Murray was sent back to flag the White Mountain express, but had gone only a short distance when the train passed him. The state's contention was that Murray did not go back far enough in performance of his duty. In pronouncing sentence the court said that Murray's negligence was very remote. The real cause was the system under which the flagman worked. The court said it had been reading the finding of the interstate commerce commission in which different contributory causes for the wreck were assigned, and Murray's was the least of these. The flagman had four minutes in which to go back 2000 feet, and even if he had covered that distance, the wreck, under the conditions, could not have been averted, in the opinion of the court. The trials of Brace C. Adams, conductor of the Bar Harbor express, and of Engineer Miller of the White Mountain express are yet to be held.