It was a sunny Saturday morning and the man decided to bring his seven-year-old son along to work with him to show his son what his daddy did. He showed him the big gears which raised and lowered the bridge and how to pull the levers here and there. The boy later played along the river skipping rocks on the water, chased some butterflies, and even tried to catch some fish.
Just before noon, a passenger train was due to come through the area. So the man began to make preparations to let the bridge down so the train could pass safely across the river. As he examined the bridge, he noticed that someone—a small child—must have crawled over the guardrail next to the bridge and had gotten his foot stuck in one of the gears. As he looked closer, he was horrified to discover that it was his own son. He heard the train’s first whistle blow. The child was too far away for him to run to his rescue and get back to lower the bridge. He knew he had to make a quick decision. If he lowered the bridge now, his son would die, crushed by the mammoth gears. But if he didn’t, all the people on the train would die as the train plunged into the river. He barely had time to think.
As he screamed in agony, the man thrust forward the lever to lower the bridge just
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