CAR TOPPLES OVER PIER

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17918, 24 October 1932, Page 11

CAR TOPPLES OVER PIER

FAMILY DROWNED LONG BEACH, Cal., Sept. 3. While several hundred civilians and sailors watched, an automobile toppled over the seaward end of a pier adjoining the navy landing in outer Long Beach harbor, on Friday, carrying four members of a wealthy family of this city to their deaths in 32ft. of water. The dead: R. L. Barnes, 53; his wife, 50; their son, 18, and Mrs S. W. Barnes, 75. A daughter of the Barnes, Marian, 14, was saved by efforts of the cruiser Marlborough’s shoreboat crew, after she hail clambered through an open window of the automobile. Boat crews from the Marlborough aiul the cruiser Mihvaukeo and squads from the Long Beach fire and police departments, as well as a train crew which pressed a locomotive into service, struggled desperately to raise, the big automobile, before the lives ot its remaining occupants were taken by drowning. The elder Barnes, at the wheel of the seven-passenger ear, attempted to turn the machine about at the pier’s end after he and -his family had spent several hours watching fishermen off the pier. In turning, the Barnes’ machine drew too 'close to the end of the pier and its outer wheels slipped over the edge.