MAD ATTACK.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 282, 28 November 1925, Page 10

MAD ATTACK.

. <- ——- ON MELBOURNE CONSTABLE. MAN WITH HUNTING RIFLE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, November 23. Victoria was the scene of another remarkable episode during the week-end, when an amazing attack was made on a senior ■ constable of police at South Richmond'on Saturday morning. At 8.30 a.m. Senior Constable George Westcott was sitting in his' chair at the police station when he AA'as" suddenly confronted by a six-foot man carrying a. big game hunting rifle. . ... The rifla was pointed at Westcott, Avho heard no sound until he was ordered to put his hands up. He thought naturally that the man was one of. the many police attached to the station having'a joke \vitli Him. Westcott has not been at South Richmond long, and does not know all tbe men. by sight. But when the'- nian barked "Come on, well over your bead,".and accompanied his order by placing the rifle to his shoulder and sighting with a bloodshot eye, the senior constable thought it Avas time to forget it might be a joke. "I shot my' ar'ius up,"'he said when interviewed.' "and thought I was a' certainty to be killed. I thought of my wife and four children.at borne at Brighton, and ' -wondered' what' they ■\yould do. But;even as my mind - was noticing that muzzle and "that Avickedlooking, Wood shot' eye, my legs had Avorked free of the chair and the table, and I was practically side on to. the stranger" Westeot-t cannot . remember moving, but be leapt at tbe. intruder, grasped the rifle barrel, and eventually wrenched it from the hands of tlie big stranger. Then they commenced a long struggle, from which Westcott emerged victorious, having clipped his handcuffs on to the stranger. ' At the Richmond watchhouse later in the morning Alfred Ernest Chambers, 29, of Chestnut Street, Richmond, ex-police-man, was charged with attempting to discharge a firearm with intent to do grievous bodily harm.