SHOT DEAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 29, 3 February 1934, Page 9

SHOT DEAD.

UNARMED MEN.

GERMAN "REDS."

Attempt to Escape from Px-ison Motor Van. ALLEGED CONSPIRATORS. (United P.A.-Electric Telegraph—Copyright) (Received I' 2 noon.) BERLIN, February 2. Following an escape from a jxjlice van proceeding to Potsdam from Berlin, four well-known Communists were shot dead. They included Johann Scheer, successor to Herr Thaelmann 'in the leadership of the Communists. . The quartet, though in a concentration camp when the crime was committed, were allegedly involved in the murder of a carpenter named Alfred Kattner, who was found shot dead in bed yesterday morning. The actual murderer is not known, but it is asserted that the quartet conspired with him to cause Kattner's death.

It is officially reported that when the van was slowing down 011 an icy patch of the road, the prisoners jumped o'ut. The police pursued the fugitives, who, though unarmed, attacked the police, who were armed with rifles, revolvers, daggers and batons. One officer was injured in the face. The quartet were promptly shot. Kattner would have been an important witness in a charge of high treason against Herr Thaelmann. The papers print varying accounts of the incident, but none explain why unarmed men ceased their flight in order to attack armed police with their bare hands.