Bernard O. O’Mary, 65, of Smith Street, Edgemont, a mill worker, died at Watts Hospital at 8:45 Saturday night as a result of injuries sustained at 6:20 a.m. Saturday when he was struck by a Ford roadster, owned and operated by L.T. Guthrie, carpenter and an employee of Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company, on East Main Street, a short distance west of the Norfolk and Western Edgemont railroad crossing. Guthrie is being held under a nominal charge of assault and battery with a deadly weapon and will, it was understood last night, be given a hearing in recorder’s court Monday morning.
Guthrie, a young man of good appearance, in the company with a friend, F.E. May, also of East Durham, gathered the unconscious form of the stricken man up and hurried him to Watts Hospital with a request that the best doctors obtainable be procured and everything possible be done for the injured man. He then went direct to police headquarters, gave the officer in charge all information in the matter, and advised that he was ready to comply with any direction of the department. He was released on bond but told to hold himself ready to come to headquarters whenever wanted. Guthrie spent the greater part of the day at the hospital, going there four different times in order to keep in touch with the man’s condition. He appeared greatly moved when advised that O’Mary was dead.
According to his version of the affair, he was proceeding west on East Main Street and had just topped the hill and passed over the railroad tracks at the Edgemont crossing when O’Mary stepped off the north curbing and directly in front of his car. He was driving, he said, about 10 or 12 miles an hour and stopped his car within less than its length after striking the man. O’Mary was knocked backward, his head striking the curbing and fracturing is skull.
O’Mary was knocked unconscious and one front wheel of the machine passed over is body. Guthrie immediately alighted from his car and was joined a moment or so later by May who had stopped his car a few yards west of that point and started back to learn why Guthrie had stopped Between them they placed the unconscious for of the aged man in May’s closed car and drove rapidly to Watts Hospital. O’Mary never regained consciousness.
According to all information Chief of Police Walter Doby has been able to get in the matter the accident appears to have been of a wholly unavoidable nature and while regrettable could not have been helped. It was this opinion, based on the findings in the case, that prompted him to permit the temporary charge lodged against the driver to remain unchanged overnight. Sheriff John F. Harward, called into consultation by the chief, agreed that the course being pursued was apparently the proper one.
Immediately after the chief had been notified of the man’s death he communicated with Guthrie and directed him to come to his office. The man responded promptly and there in the presence of a Herald man recounted the happenings of the morning.
The deceased is survived by two sons and five daughters. He was preceded to the grave by his wife by three years, her death occurring suddenly in 1921. Funeral services will be conducted from the late Smith Street home of the deceased at 2:30 o’clock Monday afternoon and will be conducted by the Rev. W.F. Elliott, pastor of Branson Methodist Church. The body will be interred at Northside graveyard in Granville County.
From page 2 of The Durham Sunday Herald, Nov. 23, 1924
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn84020730/1924-11-23/ed-1/seq-2/
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