WATERLOO- A 17-year-old boy died and his friend was injured when the two climbed a high-voltage electrical pole off the West River Road here yesterday.
Louis Carl Smith Jr., son of Louis and Jeannette Smith of 19 Swift St, was pronounced dead by Seneca County Coroner Arthur Schroeder.
A post-mortem examination by Dr. Paul C. Jenks at Taylor-Brown Memorial Hospital indicated that the death was an accident, and caused by electrocution, according to Schroeder.
State police said Smith and Robert Heye, 16, of 313 W. Main St., were descending the high pole when Smith apparently slipped and fell onto a live wire.
The Heye youth was burned on both hands when he climbed toward Smith and touched the boys shirt, police said. Heye was treated at Taylor-Brown and released.
A third youth, Tracey John Eannetta, 15, of 12 State St., was not injured but was examined at the hospital. Police said he had not climbed the pole.
State police said Smith and Heye had reached the top of the pole, in a remote wooded area between W. River Road and Barge Canal, and were on their way back down when the accident occurred, leaving the Smith boy draped over a crossbar some 60 feet above the ground. A New York State Electric and Gas Company crew turned off power at the Geneva su? station and used a lift-bucket truck to assist in retrieving the boy.
A crewman raised himself in the lift and another climbed the pole tower. Together they placed the boy in a safety belt and lowered him with ropes to the ground where he was pronounced dead.
Power in the Waterloo-Border city was off for more than two hours as the operation went underway.
Involved in the rescue attempt was North Seneca Falls ambulance crews, Waterloo fireman, and the Seneca County Sheriffs Department.
The Smith boy was a student at Waterloo Highschool.
I remember that sad day when Emerson told me. I went to the calling hours and at first, it was an open casket, but Carl was all make-up, hands under the half drape and it was just too much for Aunt Jeanetter, as well as the rest of us. I think I 8 or 9 at the time.
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