SHOCKING DEATH

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 193, 16 August 1941, Page 8

SHOCKING DEATH

STRUCK BY TRAIN

SOLDIER FROM HOPU HOPU

(0.C.) HAMILTON*, this day. To be struck by a train and then the body run over by several other trains was the fate which befel a private from Hopu Hopu military camp last night. lie was

Private .James Irvine, aged 46. returned soldier, on the camp start at Hopu Hopu.

His wife lives at 3G. Kensington Avenue. Balmoral, Auckland. There are two children.

The first indication of the tragedv was when a man's boot containing a foot was discovered in an ashpit at the Frankton railway yard. The police and railway stations along the Frankton-Auckland route were notified, as it was thought that the train from Auckland had carried the boot to Frankton.

An immediate search was instituted and the Ngaruawahia police, with two Huntly railwav men, discovered Mr. Irvine's body just north of Ngaruawahia railwav bridge at 3 a.m.

The body was so badly smashed that the jigger on which the Huntly railway men travelled passed right over it in the first instance without noticing it. After being hit by the first train the body was apparently run over by every train which covered the route between eight o'clock last night and three o'clock this morning. The boot with the foot in it was discovered by a Frankton railway employee in the pit where the ashes from the locomotives are emptied. It is thought that Private Irvine was struck by a train either arriving at Frankton at 7.50 p.m. or one arriving at 8.5 p.m., both from Auckland. An inquest was opened this afternoon before Mr. W. H. Freeman, S.M., when evidence of identification was given.