FATALLY SHOT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 285, 2 December 1941, Page 2

FATALLY SHOT

FEDERAL M.P/S SON

MACHINIST SENT FOR TRIAL

(0.C.) SYDNEY, November 29. At Newcastle on Thursday the coroner, Mr. A. W. Johns, committed Roy Randolph Hindle, 28, machinist, for trial on a charge of having murdered William Thomas James, 32, son of Mr. Rowley James, Federal M.P. James was fatally shot at South Maitland railway workshops on November 20. Walter Reginald White, boilermaker, said: "I went to the store with James. Hindle fired at him without warning from a distance of about a foot.:'

In a statement to the police Hindle was alleged to have said that one day when he remarked to James that he must be good with the boss to get a job on the lathes, James said Hindle had no right to be there at all. James wanted Hindle to go out and fight, and when Hindle refused said: "If you open your mouth about me again at all, I will drag you out of the workshop and fight you. I will kill you." Hindle was alleged to have told the police that he then cut down a pea-rifle so that he could take it to work. He intended to fire it to frighten James. At the store White and James came towards him. He put a bullet in the rifle to frighten James because James was going to hit him. The bullet was intended to miss James but hit him.

Detective Parmenter said Hindle was married and had two children. He had a small farm at Oakhampton and sometimes worked on it throughout the night. Henry Joseph Lygoe, foreman, said he had warned Hindle about fighting. Hindle had been a speedway rider and had once had a serious fall and been in hospital.