CONSTABLE WON.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 84, 11 April 1939, Page 11

CONSTABLE WON.

CONVICT CHASED.

BOTH PLUNGED IN CREEK.

ESCAPEE EXHAUSTED.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, April 8.

After three days of liberty, Joseph Bourke was arrested after a dramatic early morning chase in Robertson on Thursday. Bourke, with two other convicts, escaped from Parramatta gaol on December 17. One man was caught the same day and another was captured -13 days later in an empty house at Redfern, but all the police efforts to find Bourke failed.

On Thursday, about 3 a.m., Constable Chalmers was called out of bed at Robertson by a report that someone had broken into the poet office, a shop and two garages. In the main street lie saw a man who, as soon as the constable appeared, started to run. The constable, finding goon that he was not gaining on the man in the chase, called out to him to stop or he would fire, but the man ran on out of town and across some paddocks till he came to a creek, into which he plunged.

Pocketing his gun the constable dived in after him, and when the two of them emerged on the other bank it soon became clear that the escapee was the more exhausted of the two. The constable soon overhauled him, and Bourke submitted quietly to being handcuffed, j

When questioned about his doings since his escape from gaol, all he would say was that he had been in hiding around Sydney.