Plunging 50 feet to a [illegible] to floor at the bottom of a drying tower at the plant of the New York Wire Cloth company on East Market street, Sterling Anderson, 21 years old, an employee at the plant, was instantly killed shortly after noon today.

Anderson is a son of Mr. and Mrs. J. T. Anderson, York, R. D. 6, near Dallastown.

Police and Coroner L. U. Zech, who investigated the death, believe that it was a case of suicide.

Anderson was off duty for lunch between 11 and 12 o'clock.

He returned to work at the noon hour and after speaking several words to Charles Stanley, a fellow employee, he walked away from the machine which he and Stanley were operating. His steps led him toward the drying tower. This was about 12:15 o'clock.

A few minutes later, another employee of the plant, a man named Charles Cunningham, had occasion in the course of his duties to pass a small door leading into the bottom of the drying tower. He glanced through the doorway and saw the man's body lying on the concrete floor, blood streaming from his head and trickling down a short flight of steps leading to the main floor.

It was Anderson. He was dead.

Police were called and an investigation was made by City Detective W. H. Myers and Patrolman Harvey Geese.

The two officers learned from plant employees that Anderson could have had no task in the course of his work which would have led him to enter the drying tower.

The drying tower is between 75 and 100 feet high. Freshly-painted wire cloth runs up and down the tower through heated air to complete the process of drying before it is rolled.

Up the north wall of the tower runs a structural steel staircase which is never used except when workmen mount it to make repair to machinery in the tower.

Anderson, plant employees say, could have had no mission which would have taken him into the tower in the regular course of his duties.

Up to the third landing of the steel staircase police found footprints in the slight deposits of dust on the seldom-used steps.

From the third landing upward, none were to have been found. The landing where the footprints stopped is about 50 feet above the floor where the body was found.

Employees of the plant who were working about the shop in the vicinity of the bottom of the tower, said that they heard a dull thud just before the finding of the body.

Anderson worked for the New York Wire Cloth company for about two years.

He was considered by his fellow employees to be a youth of excellent character, police were told.

Coroner L. U. Zech was notified of the tragedy by plant officials and he made an immediate investigation.

Plant officials and fellow employees agreed with Coroner Zech that Anderson's tragic death was a deliberate suicide.

According to two fellow employees, who were questioned by the coroner and by the police, Anderson called on his sweetheart in Spry last night. Anderson, according to the story he told to these fellow employees, had a quarrel with the girl.

She is reported to have told him that if he did not wish to call on her this coming Saturday night he would not be welcomed after that.

Although the coroner is firm in his belief that it is a case of suicide, he did not issue a death certificate pending the investigation of other circumstances.

The York Dispatch York, Pennsylvania 24 Apr 1930, Thu • Page 24