VICIOUS ASSAULTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 223, 20 September 1938, Page 4

VICIOUS ASSAULTS

WOMEN ATTACKED.

WIDESPREAD WAN HUNT.

CRIMES IN NEW SOUTH WALES (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, September 15. Detectives are conducting a Statewide hunt for a iiiiin who, with an iron bar, brutally assaulted Ethel Alice Xiemiiien, aged ;55, of Blandford, a small township near Murrurundi.

Mjs. N'ieminenV three children were at school, and her husband, a ganger, was working M) mile* away. She was sitting at a ta'ole writing letters when at 2 o'clock one afternoon a stranger, without knocking, entered the house by the back door and demanded her money. Mrs. Xiemiiicn said that she did not know where it \va*, which was true, as her husband had put. about £10 away without telling her where he had placed it. r

The nearest house was 150 yards away, but Mrs. Nieminen naturally, without thinking of this, ran towards the door ol her house screaming. The man sprang after her and. grasping her by one hand, with the other struck her about the head and face with the bar. When he had beaten her into semi-consciousness, he carried her to the bedroom. Aβ she lay on the bed Mrs. Xieminen eaw him hastily ransacking tKe chest of drawers until an exclamation announced that he had found the money. He then ran out of the houee. After about half an hour Mm. A'ieminen dragged herself from the bed and staggered to the road, where a passerby fonnd her later. The iron bar used in the assault was found in the kitchen. Escape of Assailant. Another vicious assault on a woman occurred in Sydney in the suburb of Forest Lodge. The woman concerned, Mrs. Ada Moore, aged 32, was in the front room of her house when .a man entered. Two other women, Mrs. May Taylor and Mrs. Dorothy Bourke, who were in another part of the house, heard «reams and Tan into the front room. they saw Mrs. Moore sitting in a chair, and a man attacking her. Her face was covered with blood and a handful of her hair wae lying on the floor. One of the women knocked the man over with a stick and, while the other eat on him, got Mrs. Moore away. Soon after, however, the man freed himself and bolted, and a thorough search of the district by a squad of detective* proved fruitless. Mrs. Moore had been elaehed on the scalp, the right side of the face and shoulder, and the right arm and hand, and 40 stitchee had to be inserted in her wounde in hospital.