Eye witnesses appear to exonerate Frank Dance, negro driver of the Ford touring car which struck and fatally injured John E. Coppersmith, Salem township resident well known throughout the County, in front of Stanley’s store at Old Weeksville Thursday night, of any criminal negligence in the matter. a car which Mr. Coppersmith was waiting to take to his home two miles away was parked with he engine running and headed towards Simonds Creek when the accident occurred. It is believed that Mr. Coppersmith must have stepped out from behind the car immediately in front of the car driven by Danc3e too late for the driver to stop before striking him.
The funeral is set to take place at Salem Baptist Church Sunday afternoon at half past 2 o’clock and to be conducted by Rev. E.F. Sawyer. Mr. Coppersmith is survived by three brothers and one sister. The brothers are W.B. Coppersmith and E. Coppersmith of Nixonton township, Pasquotank County, and W.G. Coppersmith of Littleton. E. Coppersmith was in Washington when the accident occurred but is expected home in time for the funeral. The sister is Mrs. W.C. Morse of Weeksville.
Nobody saw the car actually strike Mr. Coppersmith, but Steve Brothers, who lives about a mile from Stanley’s store on the Simonds Creek road, had just stepped on the porch of the store when the car passed. He heard the car and turned to see Mr. Coppersmith clutching the right render, his feet apparently under the axle, and his head just below the level of the hood and fender, and inarticulately crying out as if in pain or for help. An instant later Mr. Coppersmith dropped to the hard road and the car passed on by or over him, stopping just as the rear fender was about even with his body.
Immediately before the accident occurred, according to Mr. Brothers, Mr. Coppersmith had been standing out in the middle of the road looking up and down it, which was rather a habit with him. Alfred Sawyer, who lives on the old Coppersmith place in Salem, two miles from Stanley’s store, and with whom Mr. Coppersmith made his home, had got into it ready to start and take Mr. Coppersmith home. Mr. Coppersmith must have stepped out from behind the car into the road as the automobile which hit him, driven by Henry Dance, colored, and coming from the direction of Simond’s Creek, was almost upon him. Eyewitnesses say that the negro was not driving fast, and this is borne out by the fact that Mr. Coppersmith, a frail man of small stature, was not knocked off the road by the blow but was able to catch the fender and for a second or two hold himself above it. It is borne out further by the fact that after striking Mr. Coppersmith as the car came abreast of the first post of Stanley’s store, the automobile stopped just beyond the gas station on the other side of the store, a distance of hardly more than 20 paces from where Mr. Coppersmith was first struck. Henry Dance, too, had some excuse to be in a hurry. His wife was sick and he was going for help.
Mr. Coppersmith is believed to have died from a hemorrhage of the brain, brought on by the concussion when he fell backward from the car on the hard dirt road. Only two minor bruises were found on his body, one on the right knee and one on the right elbow.
Dance, the driver, does not believe that the car passed over Mr. Coppersmith at all. Mr. Brothers, who saw Mr. Coppersmith lose his hold and fall, could not see very well in the darkness but thinks that the car may have passed over only elbow or knee or both, or possibly one wheel may have passed from his knee up his leg and lower body, to roll off at the elbow. Mr. Coppersmith, never strong and prematurely arriving at the feebleness of age, was so heavily clothed that it is possible, in the opinion of Dr. J.H. Barkwell, who first examined him, that a Ford touring car such as that driven by Dance could have passed over his body without leaving a mark. Despite the warm weather, Mr. Coppersmith was wearing when struck a coat, vest and sweater, and a heavy army overcoat.
“I found some rigidity of the muscles of the abdomen,” says Dr. Barkwell, “but I can not say whether that was the result of his injury or not. Neither am I able to say positively that the slight abrasion I found on the knee was an absolutely fresh one. It may have been incurred prior to the accident.”
Immediately following the accident, Mr. Coppersmith was lifted to the porch of Stanley’s store, where those who had picked him up tried to assist him to his feet. He seemed dazed, however, and was laid on a bench until the physician could be summoned, and was then taken to the doctor’s office, only a few hundred yards away, where a thorough examination was made and no bones found broken and no outward signs of injury discovered except those already mentioned. He was then removed to his home where he died early Friday afternoon.
Mr. Coppersmith was a quiet and inoffensive man but an individual of marked peculiarities and many idiosyncrasies. He had little or nothing to say to any one except himself and avoided rather than sought companionship.
From the front page of the Daily Advance, Elizabeth City, N.C., Saturday evening, Aug. 16, 1924
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92074042/1924-08-16/ed-1/seq-1/#words=AUGUST+16%2C+1924
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