MASS POISONING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 113, 14 May 1936, Page 7

MASS POISONING.

JAPANESE SCHOOL MYSTERY. (Received 1 p.m.) TOKYO, May 13. Fifteen adults and 27 pupils are dead, while 1810 others were poisoned by gift cakes eaten at a sports meeting of the Hamamatsu school. Police are investigating reports that the poisoning was malicious.

PEA-RIFLE MURDER. LABOURER SENT FOR TRIAL. SYDNEY, May 13. A coroner at Kiama (New South Wales) to-day held an inquiry into the death of Charles Dawson, formerly a team driver, aged 47, whose body was discovered in a sandpit near Lake Illawarra. He committed Francis Henry Maudlin, aged 27, labourer, for trial on a charge of murder. Detective-Sergeant Mcßae gave evidence that when Maudlin was arrested he made a statement alleging that he had shot Dawson in self-defence with a revolver, as Dawson was about to shoot him with his own pea-rifle. Witness added that Maudlin afterwards altered his statement, saying he shot Dawson with the latter's pea-rifle when he himself was threatened with a knife which Dawson possessed. A local storekeeper gave evidence of having sold a box of pea-rifle bullets to Maudlin on April 30.