The engineer--who was thin and over six feet must have been the sight described in the aftermath, driving presumably a CNJ 'camelback'--was brought, among others involved, before Judge Fort's Grand Jury in Freehold later in '02,(that's 19) though the actual proceedings occur later.
Fort presided over many indictments that year including bank frauds and murders, but D. Lippincott was at barely 18 years old, not one of them, going on to a long career with the Pennsylvania and the Mayor once of Seaside Park, a stop along the line. Remember the curiosity that was the NY&LBRR, the company owned no rolling stock. The equipment that operated as far west as Whitings Junction and as far east as Bay Head Junction, when both were such, could have been both CNJ and Pennsy.
In one of those strange twists of history, this event overshadowed by the Park Avenue tunnel crash earlier in the year, which contributed more to the call for block signaling. The tunnel ironically, had been constructed as a response to the overwhelming number of fatalities at street level including that also of a young child.
Few recall another New Jersey event overshadowed by one in New York City. Four months before the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire on March 25, 1911 killed 146 garment workers, mostly women, the Alfred and Irving Wolf Muslim Undergarment Company exploded in flames killing 26 in Newark. Exclusive of the Hindenburg crash at Lakehurst, still the record for fatalities by one over the Surfside Hotel in Atlantic City of 1963 at 25 but not the worst. That was Paterson in which some 459 buildings were destroyed. What year? 1902.
More later on the very interesting Grand Jury proceedings and events in the ensuing years which point eerily back to the original tragedy.
