Alone in the Dark

The big blue and white bus, with 20 passengers aboard, was 2 1/2 hours out of Dallas, pounding north along two-laned U.S. Highway 69-75 through a heavy nighttime thunderstorm, when it suddenly skidded off the road and slammed sideways into a dead tree that broke with an eerie crunch. No one was seriously injured. Then freckled-faced Shirley Stith, 23, screamed out for her 18-month-old daughter Melanie Jane, who had been thrown through a hole in the bus's side.

Shirley Stith was the first person out of her seat. She leaped through the hole. As she touched the ground, there was a flash of blue sparks, and she crumpled to the ground. In breaking, the tree had pulled down a 2,400-volt power line, left the wire draped as a single-strand shroud over the metal hulk of the bus.

Driver James Stowe tested the shell of the wreckage and fired more sparks. To his passengers, Stowe made a grim announcement. If they stayed in their seats they would survive; if they tried to climb out, or touched metal, they would probably be electrocuted. Woodenly, 19 survivors huddled inside, gasped as they heard Melanie Jane whimpering close by. As the lightning flashed they could see the baby crawling back toward the bus. Chicago-bound Eduardo Ramos shouted for her to go back, to stay away. But in each glimpse she came closer. Suddenly, after an agonizing half-hour, there was a quick hiss of sparks. Said Eduardo Ramos: "The baby was quiet then. We couldn't hear it crying any more."

A few minutes later a passing motorist sped word of the crash to the police and to the power company. The power company pulled the switch on the line, and patrolmen headed out to the wreckage, urged the passengers to come on out. But they refused to move until a power and light man showed up, climbed up and cut the line away from the bus. After that the ambulances took Shirley Stith and daughter Melanie Jane off to Madonna Hospital at Denison, both dead of electrocution.

Visiting Washington's zoo one afternoon last week with her grandfather and sister, 2 1/2-year-old Julia Ann Vogt of Chilliwack, B.C. squeezed through a metal railing that keeps spectators six feet from the lions' cages, backed away teasingly when her grandfather ordered her to come out, backed up to a cage where a waiting ten-year-old lion named Caesar grabbed the child, clawed her into the cage, and with his mate, Princess, mangled her to death.

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