REMARKABLE FATALITY

Hawera Star, Volume LII, 25 January 1933, Page 9

REMARKABLE FATALITY

METAL IN THE HEART. John Raab, a youthful Vienna mechanic, has met his death in unusual circumstances, which for nearly a week remained unexplained. Raab had engaged himself to repair the 'barrel-organ of an aged mendicant. Of old and complicated design, the instrument had for 21 days resisted the young mechanic’s efforts to ease the tightly wound spring and so set the mechanism in motion. Eventually, while Raab was again sitting bowed over tile ancient instrument, the spring was ait at once heard to unwind with lightning speed, and in the next moment the mechanic was _ seen to fall forward and expire. As Raab was known to possess a weak heart, his parents were disposed to assume heart failure as the cause of death, the more so as no wound was visible on any part of his bodv. A closer examination, however, revealed a tiny spot above the youth’s heart, which, when X-rayed, betrayed the. presence of a minute piece of metal. It was a fragment of a cog-wlieel, which had been broken off by the rapid unwinding of the jammed spring, had shot out of the box, and, passing through waistcoat and shirt of the youth, had found its way into his heart.