ACTED FOR HER LIFE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 110, 11 May 1926, Page 14

ACTED FOR HER LIFE.

■ , GIRL'S DRAMATIC STORY. SHOT IN THE SIDE. MAX ARRESTED. (From Our Own Correspondent.! SYDNEY, May 7. By some really dramatic, acting, Dorothy Lovatt, a pretty young school teacher from Kerr's Creek, N.S.W., saved herself from sudden death when she was menaced by a man with a revolver at Daoeyville, Sydney, on Monday nij»ht. Miss Lovatt i- now- in Sydney Hospital in a critical condition, suffering from a bullet wound in the side, but according to her own story, she would have been shot again, probably fatally, if she had not claimed to her assailant that the iirst bullet missed her, and treated the matter as a joke. And all the while she was bleeding from her wound, meantime losing blood, and being on tho verge of fainting. She had been stationed at Kerr's Crook, near Orange, and during her twelve months' service at the school there, met a young man. with whom she eventually became on affectionate terms. A month ago. however, she learned that he was already married. She wrote to the Department of Education., making a full statement of the position, and asking for a transfer. The Department treated her application with consideration, and transferred her to the city. She came down at the week-end. but later learned that her lover had travelled by the same train.

On Monday night he called at her sister's home, where she was living, and begged her to come and visit his mother, at Daceyville. She agreed to accompany him, and they travelled in a tramcar to the scrubby country at Daceyville, where they alighted. "The place is just across this padflock," he told her. When they were halfway over he attempted to kiss her, placing his arm round her Avaist. She resented this, and the next she remembered was the report of a revolver, accompanied by a stinging pain in her Bide. She told detectives that she immediately Tealised that she would have to Sght for her life. She remonstrated with her assailant, saying that she would forgive him, as the bullet had not struck her. "And all the time I was on the verge of fainting with the pain," she said. •'But I realised that I must act, and get away from him." Keeping up a running fire of conversation, she managed to get to the mr* : n road with him again. When he was off his guard for a moment, she turned and ran, hailing a stranger, who -helped her into a motor bus, which took her out of the danger zone. ; Though she had lost a considerable quantity of blood, she kept her senses until she reached her sister's home in Kensington, and was then taken to a doctor's surgery. He ordered her immediate removal to Sydney Hospital, ■where she was operated upon, and now lies critically wounded. For a long time she refused to tell the name of her assailant, but eventually capitulated, and the police were called in. Her dying depositions were taken, and ... subsequently detectives • visited a house at Randwick and arrested a young man, recovering a revolver. Morris Llewellyn Davis. 33, a salesman, was charged at the Central Police Court with having shot Dorothy Lovatt with intent to murder her. The prosecuting sergeant told the magistrate that the girl was in a dangerous condition, and lie opposed bail. Davis was remanded to May 12, bail being refused.