Raceland, Lousiana – In one of the saddest stories I’ve read today, a 4-year-old boy was killed after falling off the back of a tractor and then ran over by a grass cutter the tractor was pulling behind it.
Last Thursday night, Logan Howes and his 7-year-old brother were riding on a tractor driven by their grandmother’s boyfriend. It was something they did all the time whenever they came over to visit, family say, and an activity that others in the community participate in with their own grandchildren.
But on this occasion, Barry Medeiros was making a turn and hit a bump at the same time. The older boy held on, but little Howes fell off and into the blades of a grass cutting attachment and died of multiple traumatic injuries. One neighbor described what happened immediately after they realized something had went wrong.
“We heard them yell so we walked over there and we saw Barry, the driver of the tractor crying over there and my dad went over, hugged him, comforted him and asked him what’s wrong Barry, he started just mumbling jibberish, mainly just about how he’s sorry.”
Authorities have ruled his death as an accident, an accident that has others thinking twice about letting children ride with them in such a fashion in the future.
“I hold him in my arm but it’s still not a safe way. It’s still not a safe method, wouldn’t suggest that to anybody. I’m thinking twice about it myself” Robert Foret said.
Letting kids ride on tractors is a fairly common practice within farming communities. My grandparents owned a dairy farm that we would visit quite regularly when I was a kid. I hated it until I realized that the calves would suck on anything you stuck in their mouths.
But one other fun thing I did was ride around on various tractors as my gramps pulled various equipment behind him that was designed specifically to chop up whatever it passed over. No one, not even my over-protective, hand-wringing mother, ever saw anything wrong with it.
Author: Morbid
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