Teen dies after tractor flips into pond

~ Nearly 500 fellow students, parents, family and friends attended a prayer vigil Friday night.

An 18-year-old Notre Dame Regional High School student died Friday when a tractor he was helping remove from a small pond overturned, pinning him underwater.

Flags were lowered outside Notre Dame late Friday as school leaders prepared for a prayer vigil to remember Tyler Glaus of Chaffee, who was working at Pioneer Trailer Park when the accident occurred. Glaus was at work because Notre Dame was not in session for an annual golf tournament fund-raiser.

"He was a wonderful young man," said Brother David Migliorino, principal of Notre Dame, as school employees set up for the evening prayer vigil. "He never had a harsh word and always did for others. He was humble, unassuming, and he loved his classmates."

Glaus, an honor-roll student at Notre Dame, was also a student at the Cape Girardeau Career and Technology Center.

Nearly 500 fellow students, parents, family and friends packed the cafetorium at Notre Dame for the prayer vigil, where they sang the 23rd Psalm and remembered Glaus as a gentle, hard-working youth.

"We can't begin to imagine all the pain you must feel tonight," Migliorino told Glaus' parents, Stacey and Carla Glaus. "Today as I stand here, as we all sit here and pray, the gates of heaven have flung open to welcome Tyler."

A longtime friend, Lucas Dirnberger, said he has fond memories of playing against Glaus in a grade-school basketball league. They were classmates through four years at Notre Dame, Dirnberger said.

'Homegrown country boy'

"There couldn't have been a better guy than he was," Dirnberger said. "He was just a homegrown country boy, always willing to do anything anybody wanted him to do."

Glaus was never disruptive in school, Dirnberger said, but could be counted on to enjoy a joke. "He was as serious as could be in class, but he would laugh," Dirnberger said. "It was 'get the work done' for Tyler."

The events that led to Glaus' death began when his boss, Billy Beggs, owner of Pioneer Orchard and Pioneer Trailer Park, was attempting to mow a steep bank on the edge of a small pond in the trailer park off Highway 74 at Silver Springs Road.

The tractor slipped on the rain-weakened slope, leaving large gashes in the sod where the tractor slid into the water.

Beggs asked Glaus, who was working in a peach orchard at the time, to help retrieve the tractor, co-worker Bill Jenkins said.

Beggs took a second tractor to the scene, attached it to the stranded tractor with a chain and asked Glaus to steer the waterlogged tractor as he pulled it out, Jenkins said.

As Beggs began pulling with the second tractor, the tractor with Glaus at the wheel flipped, pinning him underneath, Jenkins said.

"I've known him for three years and worked with him every day," he said. And as his eyes moistened and his voice cracked, the white-haired Jenkins said: "I would rather it have been me. I've already lived my life. Tyler was just starting his."

As Glaus's tractor flipped, it pulled the one driven by Beggs into the water. Beggs was uninjured.

Glaus died of asphyxiation, said Cape Girardeau County Coroner John Clifton. Glaus was pinned under the water and the weight of the tractor prevented him from breathing, Clifton said. No autopsy was performed.

Cape Girardeau firefighters responded to a call for help that came in at 11:19 a.m., chief Rick Ennis said. When they arrived, a police officer and three firefighters attempted to retrieve Glaus from the pond but were unable to pull him from under the tractor.

It wasn't until a tow truck arrived that rescue workers were able to lift the tractor and get Glaus back to the embankment, Ennis said. Firefighters estimated Glaus was in the pond about 25 minutes, Ennis said.

A brief attempt to revive Glaus at the scene was unsuccessful, and he was taken to Saint Francis Medical Center.

As the mourners entered the cafetorium at Notre Dame, many wrote farewell notes to Glaus and notes of condolence for his family. The notes will be placed in Glaus' locker, and candles will be kept burning outside the locker until the end of the school year, Migliorino said.

The flags will remain at half-staff until school closes for the year, he said.

rkeller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126