Allen County OhArchives Obituaries.....Smith, O. Warren October 26, 1908
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Judy Woerner judyw0113@yahoo.com January 4, 2006, 6:05 pm

Lima Daily News, October 27, 1908
Lima, Ohio
	"STRICKEN In Death as the Result of an Accident in Fall from Bridge.
	Passing of a Veteran in Dean of Lawyers.
	O.W. Smith, Ardent Prohibitionist and Life Long Attorney.
O. W. Smith, attorney at law, and one of the most widely known men in Lima, 
fell from the bridge over the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton railroad at Elm 
street, at about 6:30 O’clock last night, sustaining injuries which resulted 
in his death.

He is supposed to have struck the bank beneath the bridge.  The force crushed 
his skull, and he lived only a short time after the accident without regaining 
consciousness, to tell how he became the victim of so peculiar an accident.

Mr. Smith is 76 years of age, and this, together with the force of the fall, 
caused the injuries to be more severe than would have ordinarily happened to a 
younger person.

The most plausible theory is that to escape death by being crushed under the 
wheels of the approaching train, he jumped from the bridge.  The truth in the 
case will hardly be known, for Mr. Smith was the only witness, and his lips 
are closed in death.  He may have fallen from the bridge upon seeing the 
approaching train.

Mr. Smith had a law office in the Cincinnati block.  He was an ardent 
supporter of temperance, and a Prohibition in name and in truth.  He was 
candidate for the office of probate judge on the Prohibition ticket in the 
present campaign.  

Deceased was born in Marion county, Ohio.  He has lived in Lima for many 
years, where he was so well known.  Surviving are the wife and four daughters –
Ethelwyn, Helen, Marion and Lenora, all of whom live in Lima.  Funeral 
services have not yet been arranged, but burial will be made at Woodlawn. 

Lima Daily News (Lima, Ohio) October 28, 1908
         FOUL PLAY Theory in Smith Death is not Bourne Out by Police.
         Coroner Will Also Hold Thorough Inquest.
         Marks on the Body Could Have Been sustained in the Fall.
Chief of Police Heffern and the two plain clothes men who have been working on 
the Smith death, in an endeavor to ferret out any possibility of foul play, 
now scout the idea.

Not a clue can be found to lead to such a belief.  The marks on the body and 
back of the ear could have been sustained in the fall from the bridge.  So far 
as known, the pockets of the dead man had not been touched, and missing keys 
in his headlong drop from the high bridge.

Evidences of foul play were at first thought to be apparent, but a thorough 
investigation by the police leads to the one theory that the aged attorney 
took a misstep and fell head long.

Coroner Steiner will hold an inquest, however, and examination of the officers 
and those who first discovered the unconscious body.  That it is barely 
possible he may have been struck from behind, and knocked from the bridge, is 
admitted, but if such were true, the murderers, it is believed, gained 
nothing.  And this theory of the death is not bourne out by the circumstantial 
evidence at hand."




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