SHOTS IN STREET.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 272, 16 November 1936, Page 5

SHOTS IN STREET.

TWO MEN WOUNDED.

A GANGSTER VENDETTA?

MYSTERIOUS 'PHONE CALL.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, November 11

Last Saturday the telephone rang in the Redfern police station, and a voice spoke. "Who's there ?" asked the sergeant. "Never mind who's speaking," came the reply. "There's a mob coming down to deal with some chaps," and the anonymous caller proceeded to indicate a certain hotel in Alexandria and to warn the sergeant that "there would be some shooting there."

This was not much to go upon, but the police took what precautions they thought necessary, and they were not surprised when late in the evening two men appeared at the Royal South Sydney Hospital requesting treatment for bullet wounds. Sidney Laws (27) and Henry Newberry (37) had been shot, the first through the body and the second in the arm, but neither was seriously hurt, and after treatment they were allowed to go to their homes.

The police were naturally interested, more particularly in view of the warning they had received earlier in the day, and they proceeded to investigate. It seems that a crowd had collected on Saturday afternoon at the corner of Wyndha'm Street in Alexandria, not far from the hotel that the mysterious telephone message had mentioned. An altercation between two men arose and one was knocked down and kicked. Somebody then produced a revolver, shots were fired, and out of the general scramble there emerged a man holding a gun. He ran down the street pursued by two men subsequently identified as Newberry and Laws. The rest of the crowd scattered wildly for cover, but Laws and Newberry kept on and were gaining on the fugitive t'U he turned and fired. , <

Refused to " Squeal." Newberry dodged behind a telegraph pole and Laws took shelter under a taxi-cab, but they were not quick enough to escape, and they must have suffered severely before some hours later they reluctantly resorted to the hospital for treatment. Our police are too well versed in the ways of the underworld to expect that in such cases they can get much assistance from the people chiefly concerned. The men were interrogated, and, of course, they admitted that the}' had been shot—that was clear enough— but to other questions they shook a negative head. They were in a crowd —there had been a row—somebody had used a gun—but who it was, why he lired, and more particularly why he should have shot them, they "really could not say." The police had expected precisely these answers so that they were not grievously disappointed, and when they went down to Wyndham Street and tried to question some of the many scores of people who certainly were congregated in that locality on Saturday afternoon, they got no further.

Of course the sinister message that came to Redfern station on Saturday pointed clearly enough to a gangster feud or to some deliberately conceived plan of vengeance such as so frequently adds interest to the lives of our gunmen, but what it was all about is a mystery still lurking behind "the impenetrable silence of the underworld." No doubt Laws and Newberry will find some way of "getting even" with their assailant; and in the meantime all that the police know is that there is one more desperado at liberty prepared to shoot at sight, and even to kill.