The Savannah morning news., 1902-07-14
BOLTS DEADLY DEED
THOMAS ROE AND LIZZIE WILLIAMS
KILLED BY LIGHTNING.
VICTIMS OF THE STORM.
DEATH CAME IN LUMBER CHECK
ERs' OFFICE AT HIGH WHARF.


Girl and Her Sister Had Brought
Him. and the sisters CrOuched in
the ONCE Awaiting the End of the
storms Fury-WiId Play of Wind,
Rain and lightning on Lumber
Wharves withOut-ROe and Lizzie
williams Killed, While EsteIle
williams, Two Feet Away. Escap-
ed-No Wounds Showed Lightning's
Work.
Death travelled in the wake Of the
terrific thunderstorm that ragged in Sa-
vannah for an hour yesterday after
noon. At the high wharf of the
Ocean Steamship Company at the ex-
IRENE western end of the terminals,
Thomas Roe, a white Waterman on
the wharves, and Lizzie Williams,
little colored girl who had brought him
his dinner, were struck by lightning
and instantly killed.
By what seems a very miracle Es-
telle Williams, the sister of the girl
who was killed and who was sitting
not more tain two feet away when the
bolt made it's deadly entrance, escaped.
The man and the two girls were in
the lumber checkers office on the high
wharf when the bolt descended. Roe
had finished the dinner the girls had
brought him and they had remained
within the little shack on the wharf
for the purpose of avoiding the fury
of the storm that ragged without.
Even within the frail shelter it was
l..
wind beat upon the roof as though
they would tear the building away,
while on the tracks that lead from the
main line to the wharves the lightning
played and flashed and flashed and
played again almost without cessation,
seemingly, to the terrified inmates of
the office, with constantly increasing
danger to themselves.
Wires Flashed Through Air.
Away to the south they could see
the wires. torn by wind or lightning
from. the poles that had supported
them, animated by the fiery bolts that
fell from the skies, flashing about
through the rain-filled air like whip
cords charged with fire and death.
Roe had closed the door and sat with
his chair against it, while Lizzie Will
liams crouched on pile of blocks near
the window, gazing with fascinated
eyes upon the display of natures fire
works that was taking place outside.
Not two feet away, but outside the line
between the window and the door, Es-
telle Williams sat on the edge of box.
Between the girl at the window and
the man at the door. in the center of
the room. was an iron stove, used to
heat the office in the winter. 1t is sur
missed, though the actual fact must re-
main shrouded in mystery, that this
stove proved the attraction tina led the
bolt through the window and drew it
on in its errand of death.
The Flash of the Bolt.
1t was at the conclusion of partic-
ularly violent series of lightning
flashes that the man and girl were
stricken. All were speechless and Won
dering in the face of the storm and
all were peering in gloomy, strained
intensity through the window when
the bolt came.
There was a binding flash, terrific
crash of thunder. the rending noise
of splintered wood the gasp of one
stricken unto death-and all was over
Estelle Williams saw her sister lying
dead against a pile of wood, while
Roe was leaning forward in his chair,
his eyes bullying from their sockets,
his hands opening and closing con-
vulsively, gasping and choking in the
paroxysm of death. The frame of the
door and the door itself had been
splintered by the fierce onslaught of
the thunderbolt.
The frightened girl waited to see no
more. With a Shrek of wild and I'M
governable terror she clutched the
hand of the dead or dying man and
pulled him from the door. This she
opened and still shrieking and sobbing
ran from the scene of death. across
the wind and rain-swept wharves, over
piles of lumber and through gullies
and cuts filled with water, in the di-
rection of her fathers house.
Her father, Friday Williams, lives
at COS Bay street, west, near the
wharves. AS the girl fled along her
way, crying as though her heart would
break, she passed Patrolman Knox, of
the Ocean Steamship Company's force,
and the policeman endeavored to CLEAN
from her the cause of her grief. She
was too wildly excited to tell him, but
in few minutes her father, to whom
she had told her story, passed the Of
ticer and told him what had occurred.
Finding of the Bodies.
Patrolman Knox accompanied the
father to the scene of the tragedy.
while the weeping mother followed in
the rear. The door was still open
when they approached the little build
ing and just inside. lying where he had
fallen when he was pulled away from
the door by Estelle Williams, was the
body Of Roe, stark and stiff In death.
To the left of the entrance, near the
window, with her head reclining on the
pile of wood, was the body of the dead
girl.
The only wound or abrasion on
either body was a triflng cut on the
side of Roe's head, evidently made
when he was pulled from the chair
by the frightened girl. The shoe on