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© Marietta Monitor
April 8, 2016
50 Years Ago ...
The calm of Easter Sunday afternoon was shattered at a Marietta railroad
crossing when four young lives were taken in the grinding wreckage of the Buick
sedan in which they were riding and a passenger train.
Killed instantly in the collision with the Texas Chief, a northbound Santa Fe
passenger train, were two Marietta brothers, Charles Smithwick, 17, and Richard
Smithwick, 10, and their cousin, Sylvia Brashear, 18.
Judy Brashear, 12, Sylvia's sister passed in an ambulance en route to the
hospital.
The girls' mother, Mrs. Inez Brashear, 44, and 16-year-old Margaret Brashear, a third sister, were seriously injured. The Brashear family lives in Choctaw.
The tragic crash occurred at 3:43 p.m. Sunday when the car turned east in to the path of the oncoming train at the Creek Street crossing, three blocks south of Main Street.
Trooper John McBride said a short span of skid marks indicated that the car had
attempted to stop, but after it was upon the tracks. The impact of the collision
hurled the car 200 feet alongside the Santa Fe tracks. McBride estimated the
speed o the train at 50 miles per hour and said there had been no chance for it
to stop.
Note by Martha
RR had no crossing hazards and there were two trains, coming from
opposite directions. Guess they saw the first one but not the 2nd.
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