TWO DROWNED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 10, 12 January 1934, Page 2

TWO DROWNED.

I EFFORTS TO RESCUE MAN. BOY LOST IN RIVER, ; (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) CHKISTCHURCH, Thursday. Two drowning accidents occurred today, a man being the victim at New Brighton and a boy losing his life in the Waimakariri River. Mr. Henry James Freeman, aged 23, of Wellington, advertlsmg agent for the National Tobacco Company, Napier, lost his life at North Beach, New Brighton, while bathing at 8.30 this evening. He was with Miss Phyllis Muriel Brass, aged 27, of Clissold Street, Merivale, daughter of Mr. W. G. Brass. They had gone out about 50 yards, but not out of their depth, when Miss Brass became uneasy about the current. Mr. Freeman called out that he was in trouble and told Miss Brass to go ashore for help. She reached the beach exhausted and needed attention when she was taken from the water. There were several attempts at rescue, and four rescuers got into difficulties in trying to reach Mr. Freeman. The lifesaving equipment was some distance away, and when it was brought to the spot opposite Mr. Freeman the captain of the North Beach Surf Club, Mr. Alan Dalton, went out with a belt. Mr. Dalton brought in four would-lie rescuers. Then when he was almost exhausted he swam out in a last effort to find Mr. Freeman, but he was unsuccessful. The scond victim was Bernard McKernan, aged nine years, son of Mr. Jajncs McKernan, of Woolston, who waq drowned in the Waimakariri River at Kainga, near Stewart's Guliy, thin evening. Accompanied by three or four other lids about his own age McKernan set out to wade from the river bank to a sandspit some distance out in the stream. The party reached the spit, but on the return McKernan disappeared. Either he stepped into a pothole or was swept away by the swift current. Hβ was not seen again.