Boys survive week in boxcar drinking stale beer

December 2, 1998
 Web posted at: 7:15 PM EST (0015 GMT)

CINCINNATI (AP) -- Two boys who hopped a freight train and got locked in
a boxcar say they  survived for more than a week by drinking the cargo:
stale beer from mostly empty bottles being returned to a brewery.

"I didn't drink that much, just a little something to get my mouth wet,"
John Wayne Riley, 15,  said Wednesday. He said he lost about 20 pounds
during the ordeal.

John said he and 12-year-old Billy Ray Grimes Jr. had jumped onto a
slow-moving train in Hamilton on November 23 to escape a beating from a
half-dozen thugs chasing them. But authorities are suspicious of that
part of the story, and Billy said they were running away from home.

About two miles up the track, they switched to another train, which John
said he thought was headed back to Hamilton, about 25 miles northwest of
Cincinnati. Instead, it was bound for the Miller Brewing Co. rail siding
at Trenton.

Somehow, the boxcar doors slammed shut and locked, leaving the boys
without heat, light, food or water. It was eight days before brewery
employees taking inventory in the rail yard heard someone pounding on
the side of the boxcar, and the boys were freed.

"Every time I heard a noise, I'd scream, holler and beat on the walls,"
John said. "I don't think I would've made it another day. Those people
saved our lives."

The boys, cold and hungry when they were freed Tuesday, were taken to a
hospital where they were treated and released.

"We thought we was going to die," Billy said. "We was thirsty and
hungry, and we didn't have nothing to drink but some beer."

He said the boys used their shirts to strain the old beer in the
bottles.

Dr. Barry Staley, a family practitioner in West Chester, said drinking
the beer might have saved their lives by warding off dehydration.

But John said the younger boy drank too enthusiastically.

"He said, 'I give up. We aren't ever going to get out of here,'" John
said. "He smacked me with a beer bottle. That's when he realized he's
got to quit it."

Billy said he never struck his companion.

The boys, who attended a school for suspended students, had been
reported missing by their parents. Reports filed with Hamilton police
said both boys had run away several times and were on probation.

John said all that would change. During their time in the boxcar, the
boys talked about turning their lives around, he said.

"I decided I've got to get a new crew to hang out with -- change my ways
and stay out of trouble," he said.

Billy said:, "I'm going to straighten up my life and go to church."
 
 
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