Seven-year-old Willie Linsky was playing near his Brooklyn home in 1908 when something on the opposite side of the railroad tracks caught his attention.
The crossing gates were already down, warning that a train was approaching, but the boy ducked beneath them and hurried onto the tracks. A high-speed Long Island Rail Road freight train was bearing down on the crossing.
Willie was struck near the center of the track and hurled more than one hundred feet. His young playmate ran to summon his parents, who arrived moments later to find their son lying dead in the street.
Train Hurls Boy Far From Track
BROOKLYN, New York, — A freight train on the Long Island Railroad, which was going at high speed, struck a seven-year-old boy at Atlantic and Railroad Avenues, Brooklyn, this afternoon, crushed his head and hurled him more than a hundred feet away from the tracks…