GIRL KILLED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 77, 1 April 1940, Page 11

GIRL KILLED.

TRAGIC CAR CHASE.

SPEEDS UP TO 80 M.P.H.

LABOURERS FOR TRIAL.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, March 28

It was alleged in the Coroner's Court this week that a beer bottle was deliberately thrown from a stolen car in the path of the pursuing police patrol in the hope of wrecking it. The inquest concerned the death of Betty Joyce Burton, IG, of Kings ford, who was killed by a car in Anzac Parade, on March 2. Robert Henry Pratt and Leslie Dugdale, both 20 and labourers, were committed for trial on a charge of manslaughter. The driver of the police car, Constable C. H. Hancock, saUl that about 0..">0 p.m. on March 2, be wae driving with another constable in Pagewood and noticed a car, which had l>ecn reported stolen, travelling at a high .«peed towards La Perouse. They cha<?cd the car at speeds up to SO miles per hour for nine and a half miles. Halfway through tho chase a beer bottle was deliberately thrown from the rear seat of the fleeing car into the path of the police car. Flung 30 Feet Into Air. The stolen car headed back toward* Sydney and when it was near Anzac Parade the police dropped behind because of tho thickening traffic. The car crashed into Betty Burton, who was riding a bike. She was flung 30 feet into the air and fell on to the footpath, breaking her neck. The car then crashed into an electric light ]>ole, snapping it off, and came, to a stop. The four occupants were found in a dazed condition. Pratt was in the driver's seat. A woman, Mre. Jean Frank Russell, was in the front seat beside him, and Dugdale and the other passenger, a waitress, Katherine Marjorie Young, were lying on the footpath. In a statement to the police, Pratt was alleged to have said: "When 1 mel the girls I told them the car was not hot, but would be shortly. During the chase I heard Dugdale eay, 'I'll throw this bottle in front of the P.D. tar and puncture it. , " When Mrs. Russell was asked if the car had been travelling at a high speed, ehe. eaid: "I couldn't say. I have never ridden in a car before. I would not know if a car which passed me in the street was going fast or slow."