SHUNTER’S SHOCKING ACCIDENT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3732, 20 December 1927, Page 2

SHUNTER’S SHOCKING ACCIDENT.

AMBULANCE RACES AGAINST TIME. Auckland, December 18. Considerable excitement was caused at Newmarket about 6.30 p.m. on Saturday, when one of the largest ambulances of St. John Association was driven down a public stairway on to a platform, where a shunter, George Goldsmith, aged 36, married, lay bleeding copiously as the result of having his right arm torn from his body during shunting operations. Although it is not known howthe accident happened, it is believed that Goldsmith slipped under the slo.v-moving train, and that his arm was dragged from the socket.

Within a few minutes a doctor was attending the man, and the ambulance was on the way. Driven at a high speed by the chief transport officer, the ambulance ran down the public steps, scraping the sides as it did so. While the stretcher was being got out the driver cleverly turned the big car around on the platform, and when the patient and the doctor were inside hurried up the steps and through Newmarket at 50 to 55 miles an hour. Only three minutes elapsed from the time of the arrival of the ambulance on the platform and the admission of Goldsmith to the operating theatre in the Auckland Hospital. Goldsmith, in spite of his dreadful injuries, was conscious up to the time when chloroform was administered to him on the operating table. At midnight to-night his condition was reported as being very serious.