Donald E. Maler, 16, rescued John J. Powell, 10, schoolboy, from electric shock, Baltimore, Maryland, September 29, 1957. While John was playing atop a metal car of a stopped freight train, his head touched an overhead trolley wire carrying 11,000 volts of electricity and he slumped to the roof of the car. The train then suddenly began to move, its crew unaware of the accident. Donald, who was in a group of spectators 600 feet from the track, ran toward the train, leaped onto a pile of ties and thence to a pipe two feet above the ground four feet from the track. He lunged from the pipe toward the train, which then was traveling at a speed of five m.p.h., and succeeded in grasping the ladder on the car directly behind the one on which John lay. Donald climbed to the roof, moved across a two-foot open space onto the next car, and crawled to John, carefully avoiding the charged wire. He lay alongside John and extended an arm across his chest, holding him against the sloped roof as the train attained a speed of 14 m.p.h. After John briefly took hold of him, Donald held John’s arm with his free hand as the train entered a tunnel almost a mile and a half long, in which the electric wire descended to 30 inches above the car. Donald continued holding John until railroad officials who had learned of the accident signaled the train to stop after it had traveled more than three miles. John was hospitalized for third-degree burns on his head and both feet, necessitating removal of a small piece of bone from his head and the amputation of four toes. Donald escaped injury. 44246-4139
44246 – 4139
44246-4139