SINGULAR OCCURRENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 168, 18 July 1910, Page 9

SINGULAR OCCURRENCE.

PRISONER'S FATAL FALL. A CONSTABLE INJURED. .(By Telegraph.—Press Association.) NAPIER, Sunday. An inquest into the circumstances butronnding the death of Alexander Drysdale Matheson, aged 51, who died at the Napier Hospital on Thursday, was held yesterday by Mr. McCarthy (coroner) and a jury. The deceased, whose name wis previously given as Maddison, was a angle man and a ship's carpenter by trade. He was a native of Aberdeen, Scotland, and his mother lives at Korini. He had been in Napier for the past two months, and during that period worked off and on as a wharf labourer. Tie deceased was given to drink, and le resisted when being removed from the poKce station to the cells after arrested on a charge of drunkenness. There was Bo room in the narrow passage for two constables to handle him, and Constable BWiard Ryan, who had charge of Mathefon, fell with him, the latter's spine being injured. When Matheson was raestioned at the hospital by Inspector Dryer; he said that he remembered the j (jstftUs pressing his head forward and f on it. He could not sign his ftitent a3 both hands were paralysed, festable Eyan deposed that at the Aw leading to the lock-up yard Mathe- j

son raised his arms, apparently to catch bold of the top of the door, and then slipped from the top step, whicb was wet from rain. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death, and held Constable Ryan blameless. They added a rider to the effect that in their opinion the passageway where the accident took place should ■be widened or another doorway provided leading from the watch-house to the cells.