Infant Smothers To Death
When House Catches on fire

Minot, May 14— Violette Van Hook, 10-months-old daughter of Mr and Mrs L.S. Van Hook, 521 First avenue northeast, was smothered to death at 11:30 A. M. when the kerosene stove in the Van Hook home exploded while Mrs Van Hook was visiting at the home of Mrs. Barlow, a neighbor living next door. When the flames were discovered William Champion, who lives across the street, endeavored to gain entrance through a window to the room where the baby was sleeping but the flames drove him back. Miss Sophia Johnson, who lives nearby, tried to enter the door but others who were near held her back, the inside of the room into which the door led being a mass of flames.

Bismarck Tribune, 5/14/1921