ESCAPE TO WEST

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29803, 21 April 1962, Page 5

ESCAPE TO WEST

Police Shoot At Refugees (N.ZJ>. A. -Reuter— Copyright,

BERLIN. April 19 Machine-gun Are from East German police killed a refugee and badly wounded at least two others in escape attempts early yesterday, tne Associated Press reported. The dead man, a 24-year-old truck driver, was shot as he crashed through the barriers at a crossing point between East and West Berlin, said the agency. His two companions were badly wounded. A soldier of the East German Army was believed to have been wounded in a second escape attempt. His companion, another soldier, made it safely into West Berlin. The truck driver made his daring attempt at Heinrich Heine Strasse, a mid-town crossing reserved by the Communists for citizens of West Germany who are still permitted to visit East Berlin.

East German border police fired three salvos and a number of individual shots. Western police said. They counted 20 in all. The truck, loaded with gravel, crashed into a house on the West Berlin side. One of the two other men in the truck, aged 29, suffered severe bruises. The other, aged 20, was shot in the shoulder. All lived in East Berlin.

A little more than an hour later, the two soldiers tried get through fences that separate West Berlin from East German territory near the tiny suburb of Steinstuecken, isolated from West Berlin by a strip of Communist-held territory. West Berlin police said 50 shots were fired from the Communist side, and one of the soldiers was killed, while the other got through safely.