ASSAULT ON WOMAN

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25934, 14 October 1949, Page 3

ASSAULT ON WOMAN

MAN COMMITTED FOR SENTENCE ACCUSED GAVE HIMSELF UP TO POLICE (New Zealand Press Association.) AUCKLAND, October 13. Lewis Henry Isaacs, aged 41, a stonemason, was charged in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday, before Messrs H. Cooper and G. F. Forsyth, Justices of the Peace, with assaulting Reta Allen so as to cause her actual bodily harm. He pleaded guilty, and was committed to the Supreme Court for sentence. Senior-Detective J. B. Finlay prosecuted. The accused was not represented by counsel. Reta Allen, in evidence, said she was separated from her husband. She had known Isaacs for about six months. She worked as a baker's labourer at a pie factory at Freeman's Bay. They met outside the Suffolk Hotel about 6.46 p.m. on October 6. and walked to Victoria Park together. They decided to get some beer, so went to a house in Union street, where Isaacs got four bottles. “We went back to the park and drank the tfeer. Isaacs drank most of it. He then went to the hotel and bought four bottles of beer and a bottle of wine. Then we went by taxi to Point Erin Park about 9.45 p.m.. and sat down among the trees. Most of the wine and beer was drunk by the two of us.”

Mrs Allen said that they were both still in the park at 12.30 a.m. "He then grabbed me by the throat and said he was going to kill me and throw me into the harbour,” the witness said. “He tried to choke the life out of me. I was hit on the head bv a bottle, and lost consciousness.”

Dr. J. Z. Coombes who examined Mrs Allen when she was taken to the casualtv department on October 7. said she was mildly shocked and rather talkative. There was drying blood on her face. neck, and hands, and she had a small but deep laceration in her neck. The marks on her neck could have been caused by the pressure of hands, and the laceration was consistent with a cut from a broken bottle. . Constable E. D. Morris said he was on duty wh°n Isaacs called at the Ponsonby Police Station. His hands, sleeves, and shirt were covered in blood. “The accused told me that he had lust killed a woman in Point Erin Park, and =aiH he wanted to get hold of the detectives.” said the witness. “I telephoned the Central Police station. and while waiting for a police oar the accused talked. He said: 'yp done her in. I strangled her. She can’t nut it over a serviceman. T don t care if thev hang me or put me against a wall and shoot me. She put it across her own soldier boy.