NEGRO ESCAPEES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue LXXIV, 17 November 1943, Page 4

NEGRO ESCAPEES

OVERCAME GUARDS

ONE SHOT, ONE SURRENDERED

(0.C.) SYDNEY, Nov. 12. A 21-year-old United States negro soldier escapee was shot dead by United States military police at a house in Surry Hills, Sydney. He had escaped from United States detention barracks in Sydney after overpowering an unarmed guard and stealing his keys. He released another negro soldier prisoner, and together they overpowered a second guard and took his pistol. They locked the guards in a cell and then overpowered and disarmed a lieutenant serving as officer of the day. Holding the lieutenant before them as a shield, they descended a stairway. A desk sergeant drew his pistol and tried to stop them. He was overpowered and his pistol taken. They fired several shots at another guard as they crossed the barracks yard. The guard fired back, but in his care not to hit the lieutenant he missed the escapees. The soldiers knocked out the lieutenant by hitting him on the head with the butt of a pistol, and then ran away. Before leading eight United States military police and two C.1.8. detectives to the house in Surry Hills, the Sydney United States Army Provost Marshal took the wounded lieutenant to the Booker T. Washington negro soldiers' club, Surry Hills.

The provost marshal told negro soldiers there what had happened and asked them to try to find the escapees and persuade them to surrender without shooting. The negro soldiers at the club instantly offered every assistance.

The military police and detectives then went to the house in Steel Street.

A military police corporal was only a few feet from a lavatory in the yard of a house when the negro soldier kicked open the door and faced him holding two loaded pistols. "Drop your guns and step out," ordered the corporal. I "If you come one step nearer I will fire," was the reply. The corporal fired three times, twice hitting the escapee in the chest. The other escapee later drove to United States military police headquarters in a taxi and surrendered.