DANGEROUS PROFESSION

Evening Star, Issue 22806, 15 November 1937, Page 6

DANGEROUS PROFESSION

BEING RUN OVER FOR A LIVING THIRTEENTH " ACCIDENT " PROVES FATAL . Leo Klapec, a wealthy merchant of Prague, Czechoslovakia, drove his car’ carefully in the dark. As he was approaching the town of Bratislava hit headlight revealed a man stagge.-ng towards-the car, ■ Hesounded his horii-. arid slowed down—but it was too late. The man had somehow got under the wheels. He gave a weird wail, which echoed through the night. • Klapeo jumped out of the car and saw a man, his face distorted with pain, lying in the road, his clothes in rags. _ Klapec was about to lift the man into his car and drive him to tha nearest hospital when a woman suddenly emerged from the darkness. Sh« shrieked and sobbed as she threw : herself upon the injured man’s body. “ You have killed him. You killed my husband I You will be made to pay for his life.”

She was a dark-skinned young gipsy, woman, with savage, glowing eyes. Klapec drove them both to Bratislava and took the unconscious man ta a hospital. His injuries were found to. be very severe, and the doctor* were doubtful whether he would even recover consciousness.

He did, and this was Klapec’s luck* for without the gipsy’s confession ha would have been convicted 'for man. slaughter'by careless driving. Before he died the gipsy regained his senses for a few minutes, and whispered hoarsely:—

“I want to confess. It is not tha driver’s fault that I was run over. I threw myself before the car. I have done it several times in the past. Now it’s all over with me.”

He could say no more, and died a few hours later. At first- pretty Binca persisted in accusing Klapec of killing her husband by his reckless drivings But finally she broke down under crossexamination and admitted that Slapn# had earned a comfortable living by 4/ deliberate practice of being run over* He started on this unusual and rather risky profession eight years ago, inspired by an accident. In the course of (fight years Slapa staged 12 car accidents. He acquired a deft routine in getting between the wheels of cars without being gravely, hurt. Sometimes he feigned drunkenness, sometimes he pretended to notice the car at the last minute only andi then jumped away, taking good care to be grazed by a wheel; at night ha would pretend to" be dazzled by .the headlights or to be peacefully, asleep by the roadside and slide towards the middle of the road when the' car was quite near, as though he were rolling oyer in his sleep. Once he staged a fainting fit right in front of an approaching car; once he walked calmly, across the road, despite the desperate sounding of the horn. His methods were ingeniously, varied, but he was always cautious and came to no great harm, cold-bloodedly calculating in advance the exact spot! and position in which he chose to be run over.

Also, Slapa took great care to chops* cars driven by their owners and not' by professional chauffeurs. Being something of a psychologist, he knew that men who drive their own car* would pay any reasonable sum rathe? than come into contact with tho police and undergo irksome inquiries. At * given moment Slapa’s wife, Binea, would appear, would shriek and soh most convincingly, and raise a rumpus as only gipsy women can do. Sha would threaten to get the police and have the reckless driver arrested at once. , , ■ In all 12 cases the trick worked, tha victims paid any amount of money they had about them, and were_ glad to get out of the unpleasant situation so easily. Slapa was in bed for a few days, and he and his wife lived on the money earned for months. The thirteenth accident proved to ba fatal. Slapa miscalculated the distance, threw himself under the car at the wrong moment, and received fatal injuries. His confession, however, exonerated Leo Klapec.