PRANK NEARLY PROVED FATAL.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 16113, 30 April 1923, Page 8

PRANK NEARLY PROVED FATAL.

BANK CLERK SURVIVES HGURS OF HORROR IN VAULT.

PATERSON, N.J,, March 9.—As a result of being ■; trapped in an air-tight vault for nearly five hours, Charles Vi Giacoma has been stricken deaf and dumb. ' Physicians at the General Hospital believe this condition is temporary, and that he will regain full use of hia faculties. Meanwhile the lad who was rescued from the vault of the People's Bank last night by men, a hole through the steel and concrete roof, is communicating with doctors ,and nurses by means of scrawled notes. Struggling back to consciousness after, enduring the agony of death,- Charles ' Di Giacoma, champion athlete, is- reliving the hours of suffcating horror ' he spent during the night in a steeljacketed vault of the People's Park ' Bank here. ■' - ;, Locked in the vault by accident when 'William Templeton, fellow Bank clerk, jokingly gave the door a shove while Di Giacoma was in the vault, it re--1 quired four hours' work by, 40 men to make an opening in the steel wall that would permit introduction of oxygen to prevent his suffocating. Doctors who watched at the youth's . bedside all night, said he would recover. '' His excellent physical condition enabled • him to> survive an experience which '.would have killed most men. j Di Giacoma and Templeton were fil/ing away the books of the bank in the j vault when the.. bank, .closed. ...Every night the two hurried to finish that the winner might stand outside and tease his : fellow with threats of slamming the safe I door: , j First out! last night, Templeton called j back, "I'm going to lock you in." He ' grabbed the heavy door and slightly j pushed it. He was horrified to see it ' slip silently into tho panel and lock , I with a smooth quietness that chilled his j blood. He summoned firemen, burners I with acetylene torches and physicians. j During the hours that workmen toiled 'in relays with torch and "drill to drive a hole through the vault roof Templeton watched, almost insensible with horror. There was no sound in tho bank save the chink, chink, chink of tools on metal and stone, low-voiced orders and the hiss of acetylene flames. Outside a crowd mustered? There was no sign from the man , immured behind the thick steel walls. For hours he was screaming in there. I hurling his body frantically "against the cold barriers which shut off air and were slowly strangling him. He wassbeating , his fists and feet against the huge steel I portal in which a clock was impassively ticking off the minutes which must elapse before tho door automatically , opened at 8.15 a.m. He was dashing his head against the door in the agony of suffocation. / But no sound l or hint of this came to the grimly toilincr men outside or to the j wildly-staring Templeton. , .Finally a I hole was driven throun-h the roof and oxygen was pumpe.l in.. The doctor was lowered on a rope and centr ■wt word, "He's barely alive, that's all." Templeton fainted. "''"'."' ~ An expert, lowered through the holo in the roof, took the mechanism from the inside and thus permitted- the great safe to bv> ing open so the vouth could be carried out to tho ambulance. which was writing, rmriha running and chauffeur at the wheel, for the dash to tlie hospital, i .