Drowned When Raft Toppled

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31210, 7 November 1966, Page 1

Drowned When Raft Toppled

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, November 6. A man was drowned and two others saved themselves when their raft overturned in the Henderson Creek on Saturday morning.

The dead man was: Peter Christopher Keenan, aged 25, carpenter, married with one child, of 62 Halesowen avenue, Balmoral. Police said that Mr Keenan, with Messrs Owen Doran, and Edward McAffery, of Mt. Eden, had been working on a sewerage construct on site at the bottom of Epping street About 9.25 a.m. they were crossing the creek on a raft made out of two 44-gallon drums when it overturned. Mr Keenan was seen struggling in the water before he disappeared. Messrs Doran and McAffery managed to get to the bank.

Several persons who lived nearby jumped into the murky water in search of Mr Keenan. A skin-diver found his body about two hours later. Constable J. B. Collins said

it was believed that none of the three men could swim.

Bodies Recovered The body of a swimmer missing since last Sunday at Huntly, was recovered on Friday afternoon. He was Andrew Kenny, aged 21, married, of Huntly. The body was recovered less than half a mile from the spot where he disappeared while swimming from pile to pile on the Tainui bridge at Huntly. The body of George Bassett Hainsworth, aged 53, missing since July, was found in the Whangaehu river on Saturday about a mile below the spot where he was believed to have disappeared. Three children saw the body in the river. Mr Hainsworth was last seen on the river bank near the homestead of his employer, Mr J. Polson, of Mangamahu.