Murder Attempt By Husband Alleged

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29829, 23 May 1962, Page 6

Murder Attempt By Husband Alleged

(New Zealand Press Association)

GISBORNE, May 22. The Crown case in the trial of Turei Moana, a 24-year-old workman, charged with the attempted murder of his wife, Mere Keiti Moana, at Tolaga Bay on New Year’s Eve, was almost completed in the Supreme Court, at Gisborne, before Mr Justice Leicester today. Moana, who pleaded not guilty, is alleged to have stabbed his wife in the stomach with a butcher’s knife.

T&t i. G. Nolan appeared for the Crown, and Mr M. D. Chrisp represented Moan*. Joseph Vance Gibson, a medical practitioner, said that when he saw Mrs Moana in the house at Hauiti IPa just after TO pjn. on December 31 she had a wound iin the abdominal cavity and I numerous lacerations about I the face. i Gibson said he later aci companied Detective-Ser-|geant B. H. Constable to a shed where Moana was lying with a lacerated throat. He was not able to speak. Rodney Robert Winston Morrison, surgical registrar at Cook Hospital, said Mrs Moana was taken to the operating theatre immediately she was admitted. The injury if left untreated would have been fatal. To his Honour, Dr. Morrison said the woman must have moved during the stabbing.

S His Honour: For the K patient to be discharged s 12 days after her admission § showed that she had a pretty good constitution? —Yes. Mrs Moana said in eviS dence that her husband had S taken out a prohibition order. S Two crates of beer arrived S between Christmas and New s Year. Describing incidents g on New Year's Eve, she said § they drank a little that afternoon, but it was not fast S drinking. § That night the relatives of S a friend who had died asked g them to come over for a g tangi. Moana was wearing 5* shorts, and she told him to get dressed, and stop drinkSing. Moana replied: "No-one S is going to stop me from S having a good time.” §■ “A short time later he said g in Maori that we were going g to the tangi, and I say ‘yes, dear’,” said Mrs Moana. S “All of a sudden someS thing dawned on me that S there was something wrong g with his eyes. They had a g glassy look about them and g when I turned round to talk to. him I felt the knife in S my stomach.” S Mr Nolan: Do you remernS ber anything after that?—l g remember kicking at him g; and then he went past me g and out the front door. Mr Chrisp: Before this hapSlpened had he been a good S husband to you?—Yes. .

Had he ever injured you before this?—No. Have you ever been frightened of him?—No. Mrs Moana said the accused “treasured” her and did not like he doing heavy work. He was fond of the children. To his Honour, Mrs Moana said her husband fell off the back of a tractor last August. Since then he had complained of pains in his head and his eyes. Rangiwhanui Te Ropu Keelan, a widow, of Tolaga Bay, the mother of Mrs Moana, said that after Moana attacked his wife he started to cut his throat, but another man staying at the house intervened.