SPIRITED AWAY?

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 138, 13 June 1934, Page 3

SPIRITED AWAY?

SEARCH FOR PATIENT. MAORI TYPHOID CASE. FOUND LATER IN HOUSE. (By Telcgr.\ph.—Own Correspondent.) NAPIER, Tuesday. Between midnight and three o'clock this morning two hospital doctors and several policemen scoured the countryside in search of a young Maori who had been treated for typhoid fever. At ehht o'clock this morning a sergeant of police found him at a house at Westshore. It is alleged that a party of Maoris stole into the infectious diseases quarter of the Napier Hospital last night and spirited away the patient, who had been treated for typhoid lever. Fortunately, he was negative at the time, but that apparently did not concern his friends. When a night nurse went on her rounds late last night site was alarmed to find her Maori patient had apparently left the premises. His bed was quite cold and his pyjamas lay over the foot of the bed. Both she and two doctors who were summoned believed he had left without his ciothes, and as it was one of the coldest nights which Napier has experienced this year, they took a more serious view of the episode.

The police were called. They and Dr. J. J. Foley, deputy-superintendent of the hospital, and Dr. Maaka obtained electric torches, and made extensive searches of the botanical gardens and the cemetery, which adjoin the hospital grounds. Every part of these two places, as well as the hospital grounds and outbuildings was searched, but there was no sign of the Maori patient.

The two doctors then went out by car and made a thorough search of roads leading to Taradale, after which they went to Eskview. hut there was no sign of the missing man. Meanwhile, several hospital porters were requisitioned, and they joined in combing the hospital and its surroundings, but at three o'elock the police decided to abandon operations until daybreak. At 6.30 the police again set out. and at eight o'clock they found the patient at a Westshore house. The patient is about 30 years of ag? and the police believe he comes from Whakatane. and that he has relatives at. Tangoio. When the police found him he was quite nonchalant about the whole affair.