HIT ON HEAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 133, 7 June 1937, Page 8

HIT ON HEAD.

WM'AN ATTACKED. If&PRUOER IN HOUSE. feme, labourer's CRIME. XjATER driven home in car. (By Telegraph.--Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, this day. Wearing a bandage round her head, -Mrs. Grace Abbott, of Faraday Street, Sydenham, entered the witness box in the Magistrate's Court to-day to give evidence against Frederick Thomas Wilder, a labourer, aged 22, who was charged with breaking and entering her house by night 011 May 30 and causing her bodily harm. He pleaded guilty and was committed to the Supreme Court for sentence. Mrs. Abbott said that she lived alone. On Saturday, May 29, she went to bed before midnight, after locking and bolting the doors and windows. In the early hours she was wakened by a blow which dazed her. She was struck again and then heard her door bang and footsteps rereating. "I screamed then, and jumped out of bed,' she said. Going to the kitchen door, she found it being held against her. Pushing it open she found a man in the room, the light being on.

"He turned to run, and I threw myself (it him, as he seemed to be going to strike me," continued Mrs. Abbott, who naid that she recognised her assailant as Fred Wilder. "How Did I Get Here?" "I said, 'Freddie, what are you doing here V" she continued. "He replied, 'What am I doing? How did I sret here ?' " Wilder told Mrs. Abbott he had been struck on the head by a motor car. He rerp..ined in the house until about 6.45 ir the morning, and said that he had come for money. He showed her a leadweighted cudgel, with a rubber handle, with whicli he had struck her. Mrs. Abbott said that she took Wilder home in a taxi, picking up his cycle on the w-ay. When they arrived at Wilder's home he climbed over the fence and disappeared. She went in and saw his pare its. Dr. Vivian said he considered that Mrs. Abbott had been lucky to escape more serious injury. Wilder, in a statement, said that he had made the cudgel nine days' before the crime. He had decided to break into Mrs. Abbott's home. When he was searching her room for money she moved, so he struck her. She screamed and he struck her again, then going out of the room. Later he helped Mrs. Abbott to bathe her head and she drove him home. Wilder added that he wanted money to go to the country to get work. He was a farm labourer but was unemployed.