Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, October 3, 1967, a two-year-old boy from Arbon Valley was hit by a car on Highway 30, about three miles west of Pocatello, and died less than two hours later. The Idaho State Journal carried the news on its front page the same day. It named him LaGrande Shay, son of Mr. and Mrs. Larson Shay of Arbon Valley.
Most of what the paper printed came through the state police. Officer Jim Finch's version opened with the Shays pulling in at the Pilot House Cafe; LaGrande, asleep, stayed behind in the pickup. At some point, as police pieced it together, the boy woke and found his own way to the highway. Homer Watkins Jr., 30, of Pocatello was driving east at 12:40 a.m. when his car hit the child, roughly 200 feet west of the cafe. Watkins put his own speed at about 55 miles an hour. By his account to officers, LaGrande was already standing mid-highway before Watkins had any sight of him, and he was too close to stop. The car laid down 118 feet of skid marks. Head injuries took LaGrande's life at 2:05 a.m. at Pocatello's St. Anthony Hospital. Nobody was ticketed over the accident.
That front-page story paired the boy's death with a second one from Monday afternoon: Jose Aguirre, 17, of American Falls, killed after the car he rode in ran into a truck on Benton Street in Pocatello.
Three days later, on October 6, the Journal printed a short statewide roundup of traffic deaths. The boy appears on that list as La Grande Shay, age two, of Arbon Valley, with Mr. and Mrs. Larson Shay named as his parents and the place of death given as Interstate 30-N west of Pocatello. Those deaths brought Idaho's count for 1967 to 199, twelve fewer than by the same date the year before.
That is all the two articles say. Neither tells where in the valley the Shay family lived, how long they had been there, why they were on the road at that hour, or where LaGrande was buried, and we have found no other record of the family in the papers we have read. Others named Shay appear in the valley's records in other years, but no source we have seen connects them to this family, so we have not drawn any connection. Family members or neighbors who can add to the record are welcome to write through the contribute page.
On this site: other accidents and losses in the valley's history are gathered on the Tragedies page.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, October 3, 1967, page 1. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
Early on Tuesday, October 3, 1967, a car on Highway 30 killed LaGrande Shay, age two, whose parents were Mr. and Mrs. Larson Shay of Arbon Valley; the spot was about three miles west of Pocatello. On page 1 the paper ran his death in one story with an unrelated city crash that cost the life of an American Falls teenager, 17.
By 2:05 a.m. he had died at St. Anthony Hospital; the collision itself came at 12:40. The paper gave head injuries as the cause of both deaths.
State Policeman Jim Finch supplied the account. Mr. and Mrs. Shay had pulled off at the Pilot House Cafe, and the boy had been sleeping in the pickup. As Finch understood it, the child must have woken by himself and gone out to the highway alone. The car hit him some 200 feet west of the cafe.
Homer Watkins Jr., 30, of Pocatello was at the wheel, heading east. Watkins estimated he was doing about 55 miles an hour. In Watkins's telling, his first glimpse of LaGrande came when the boy was already mid-highway, with no room left to stop. Officers measured 118 feet of skid marks. Police charged no one.
The other death followed a collision on Benton Street in Pocatello on Monday afternoon. Jose Aguirre, 17, was riding in a car that ran into a half-ton truck from behind, on its right side. The police version had the truck leaving one private driveway and swinging into a second one a short way down the street. Injuries sent each of the car's four riders, all of them from American Falls, to St. Anthony Hospital.