A Frightful Accident

A colored man is struck down by train engine while working on railroad tracks, and loses a leg, which results in his death.

Richard Young, a colored man of Petersburg working with the section force of the Norfolk and Western Railway Company, was terribly and fatally injured in the company’s freight yards at an early hour Thursday morning, December 31st. He stepped out of the way of an approaching train and was struck and run over by a shifting engine on another track, which he failed to see. One of the unfortunate man’s legs was nearly cut off and the there so crushed as to necessitate amputation as soon as he could be gotten to the hospital. Young was also cut about the head. His injuries and the shock therefrom resulted in his death this afternoon. Young was about thirty-four years old and married.

“A Frightful Accident,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed March 21, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1848.