SOLDIER FOUND DEAD

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 307, 29 December 1942, Page 2

SOLDIER FOUND DEAD

EVIDENCE AT INQUEST (0.C.) WELLINGTON, this day. "I am forced to the.decision that took his own life," said the Wellington coroner, Mr. W. G. Mellish, when giving his finding as to the cause of death of William John Hutcheson, a gunner of an anti-aircraft battery stationed near Wellington. The coroner said that Hutcheson was found dead at a gunEost when he was due to be relieved y another picket on the night of December 9, and had died from a gunshot wound, self-inflicted. Dr. P. P. Lynch, who conducted the post-mortem, expressed the view that the position of the wound, the blackening of its edges, and the damage to muscle tissue—due, he suggested, to the effect of blast— showed that it was extremely unlikely that the wounds could have been anything other than deliberately self-inflicted.

For Hutcheson's parents, Mr. W. P. Shortland urged that there was one explanation consistent with an accidental happening. In giving nis finding the coroner said that explanation of the accidental occurrence called for the placing of too many suppositions one upon the other.