THE CAPTURE OF POWELKA.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13710, 18 April 1910, Page 6

THE CAPTURE OF POWELKA.

The capture _• of the escaped prisoner Powelka -at Ashhurst on Saturday ended the most sensational man-hunt that has taken, place -in New ,Zealand for many years, if, indeed 1 , any similar episode has ever occurred here before. Eor fully a fortnight.the man's doings, actual and alleged, have attracted the i attention of the whole Dominion, and ! for mast, of that time the town and district that he has haunted have been lin fc. state of- lively panic, the jumpy condition of the public's nerves Being accentuated by the occurrence of two tragic incidents. Since his escape from th« Wellington lock-up, where he was awaiting his trial on eeveral ohargea of burglary, Powelka has been assumed to have caused numerous serious fires in Palmerston "North, and to have been the chief actor in a number of robberies and " sJtic_ing-up' , cases. The evidence at his trial may prove him to have been guilty of some of, these deeds,. but the limitations of time and space, and human inability to be in two placaa at one time, made it impossible for him to have committed all the crimes alleged against him. The "reign of terror" that held a populous town and the surrounding country-side in. its grip for some two weeks seems indeed to have • been very largely of the . public's -~ own making. Rumours, that in some instances at least had no foundation in , fact,' magnified the danger to | the community of the presence of 1 this escaped prisoner in its midst, the insensate arming by a large proportion of the population aggravated, not, unfortunately, without justification, the general feeling of insecurity, and the rather theatrical concentration cf dozens of police in the district further increased the public alarm by giving the man and his misdeeds an importance which neither perhaps fully deserved. There was, as the "Otago Daily Times" remarks, a wholesale attempt to run the man to earth aa if he w_»re a mad dog. It has often been the caai in the Old Country that a dog suspected of madness has been made the object of such treatment that whether mad or not at the beginning" of tho chase, it was undoubtedly so before it was killed. Powelka may or may not have been the dangerous crinu nal that he was commonly believed to be, but the manner in which he was hunted was almost calculated to drive him to deeds of violence. It *is difficult to believe that if the police had gone about the matter quietly, and the public had kept their heads he could not have been caught a Week or more ago without anything like the feus that has been made, and without the sad loss of life that in one case at least was caused by the Powelka "Bcare."' "'