Police Allege Father Killed 14-year-old Daughter’s Visitor

Press, Volume C, Issue 29587, 9 August 1961, Page 16

Police Allege Father Killed 14-year-old Daughter’s Visitor

(New Zealana Press Association)

AUCKLAND, August 8. Mr A. A. Coates, S.M., adjourned the Lower Court hearing of a charge of manslaughter late this afternoon to consider whether or not the, prosecution had established a prima facie case. He will give his decision tomorrow. The accused, Alfred Montgomery Bridger, aged 48, a dental technician, is charged with unlawfully killing James Alfred Neville, a 15 - year - old apprentice butcher, and thereby comm Ming manslaughter. Mr R. K. Davison is appearing for Bridger and Mr A. C. B. Wade for the police. Patricia Ellen Bridger, aged 14, said that her parents, who were going out for the evening, did not know that her girl-friend had invited two boys to keep them company on the evening of June 24. The boys knocked at the back door and were- let in by her younger brother after her parents had left the house at about 8.10 p.m. She said they were all talking in the hall when she heard footsteps—she knew they were her father’s—coming up the side of the house. Her girl-friend told the boys to "scat” and her brother let them out the front door. She and her brother and her girl-friend all sat in her bedroom after this, she said. A 15-year-old schoolgirl, Lesley Kay Spraggon, under cross-examination from Mr Davison, admitted that Bridger answered the back door to someone just before he and Mrs Bridger left the house. The previous wit-

ness’s younger brother, Peter Bridger, had told them it was a “boy in a leather jacket.” Neville wore a leather jacket that night, she said. Whoever was at the back door went away again after Bridger had answered. Incident at Gate Gary Phillip Woollett, aged 15, said that when fie and Neville rushed out the front door to the gate, he was aware of someone behind them as they tried to open the gate. “I half turned to see who It was and Mr Bridger came up to James and hit him on the left side of the head with a hammer. I asked him: “What the hell did you do that for?’ Mr Bridger replied: ‘That’s all right, my wife’s a nurse’ or something like that,” said Woollett. Neville fell to the ground swearing and propped his head up with one hand Bridger appeared to be trying to free the hammer. Bridger then asked his wife to ring the ambulance and the police, said Woollett. David Blair Robertson, a neuro-surgeon at Auckland Hospital, said Neville was admitted with a compound fracture of the skull. In spite of surgery and treatment he died about 4 pa, on the fifth day after his admission. The cause of death was compression of the boy’s brain stem, "caused by the presence of an extradural clot. The clot was due to a delayed or secondary * hemorrhase following a compound fracture Extradural hemorrhages occurred about 10 times a

year in Auckland in thousands of cases of head injuries, said the witness. He considered the original blow to the head , was by a weapon with a diameter about that of a florin. “I also feel that this blow, in itself, was not nearly bad enough to kill this boy directly," he said Detective Bruce Donald Thompson said he took a statement from Bridger on the night of June 24. In the statement Bridger said he was changing to go out when his son and wife answered the door to a man who asked the way to a nearby street. As he and his wife drove along the street in which he lived—Kiwi road, Devonport —soon after, his attention was drawn to a man close by the hedge at the corner of the street. His wife said this was the person who had called at the house earlier. Suspicious of Man According to ne statement, Bridger said he thought they had better get home, since he considered the man's behaviour suspicious. He stopped his car close to his home After sitting for two or three minutes he saw two men walking along the road go into his property. The statement continued that Bridger went to get a neighbour, because he was quite convinced that the men were burglars. He took a hammer from the boot of bis car— the first thing he laid his hand on. After search ng around the house he saw the men trying to get out the front gate. He ran up and made a threatening gesture to them The hammer slipped out of his hand and hit one of them on the head. According to a second statement made to Detective-Ser-geant Louis Francis O’Shea, Bridger said he threatened Neville with the hammer, and it either slipped out of his hand or he lost his grip of it. He said he picked it. up off Neville’s shoulder—he was. certain it did not touch the ground.