OCR Text |
Show Lonely Boy Flees from Form ' To Watery Death in Field TERRE HAUTE, IND. Although Mrs. Esther Baker earnestly tried to convince her 11-year-old son. Wayne Smith, that she wanted him, he wouldn't believe her. Mrs. Baker, remarried after being be-ing divorced from Wayne's father, has only a small apartment in Terre Haute. There wasn't room for the boy. She took Wayne to live with his father, Harry Smith, on a farm near town. He was lonely on the farm and ran away three times. She took him back there in a taxi and left him. "I won't stay here," he screamed, and ran across the fields. The father tried to call a warning, warn-ing, but it was too late. Wayne began running across what, for most of the year, is a dry wash. He couldn't see, In the darkness, dark-ness, that it was running 12 feet deep with water from melting snow. The boy drowned, and the verdict at an inquest was accidental death. |