Police Search Intensifies For Borstal Escapers

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28179, 18 January 1957, Page 10

Police Search Intensifies For Borstal Escapers

An extensive search today proved fruitless. Reinforcements for the search party will come from Dunedin and Christchurch. 10 policemen and two radio-controlled cars from each centre. The Christchurch contingent, led by Sergeant J. McDonald, is expected to arrive about 6 o’clock tomorrow morning, and the two cars from Dunedin at about 3 a.m. According to Inspector J. J.

INVERCARGILL, January 17. Police reinforcements from Dunedin and Christchurch will join T nvercargill police and Borstal institution warders tomorrow in the hunt for three youths who escaped yesterday and fired on a police car which was pursuing them. The three youths, who are believed to be hiding in a scrub and tussock-covered area near Oreti beach, are armed with a stolen rifle.

(New Zealand Press Association)

Kearns, officer-in-charge of the Invercargill police, the searchers are playing “a waiting game.” The youths will soon have to try to get food. although they may have taken some from the bach from which they stole the rifle and a sports car which they later abandoned. Armed Parties Today about 15 policemen, most of them armed, searched the Oreti beach area. Mobile patrols covered the West Plains, Taramoa, Wright’s Bush, and Waianiwa areas. Armed Borstal warders covered bridges and possible' escape routes. Tonight, eight mobile patrols were searching. When mobile patrols failed to find any trace of the youths in the area to the west, the search was again concentrated on the Oreti area, but there are hundreds of acres of scrub and lupins in which the youths could find shelter. Inspector Kearns said that to send men into the scrub after an armed man was dangerous. As no reports, not even a false one. had been received in spite of frequent radio appeals, it was assumed that the youths were still in the Oreti beach area, he said. Weekend baches in the area—there are about 30 of them —have been checked regularly by the police, but none has been broken into. Nor has any car been reported stolen. It is not likely that the search tactics will change with the arrival of the police reinforcements tomorrow. It would take hundreds of men to cover the area adequately. Today was cold and windy, with frequent showers of driving rain. There was also some hail.