California IN BRIEF : SAN LEANDRO : Rail Workers Saved Boy, Doctors Say

Doctors credited the quick action of a conductor and other rail workers for helping to save the life of a 13-year-old boy who lost a leg when he was run over by a freight train. Paul Mowrey of Oakland was doing well after eight hours of microsurgery that reconstructed part of his leg and gave him a chance to walk with a prosthesis, doctors said. Paul, while playing with a friend in a railway yard on Thursday, tried to hop aboard an empty box car on a slow-moving train. But he slipped onto the tracks, and one of his legs was severed below the knee. Conductor J. M. Dare and brakeman Harvey Thibault, who were standing on the other side of the train, saw Paul lying next to the tracks as the train went by. Dare used his belt as a tourniquet and Thibault ran for bags of ice to pack the severed leg while other Southern Pacific crew members raced to call an ambulance. Because about 12 inches of Paul’s leg was crushed, doctors were unable to save it, but they reconstructed the foot into a large “heel” and attached it below his knee. The procedure formed a weight-bearing stump to which an artificial leg could be fitted.