Man Stabs Himself When Police Arrive

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31782, 12 September 1968, Page 26

Man Stabs Himself When Police Arrive

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, September 11. An elderly man badly hurt with a severe abdominal knife wound threatened to kill himself while the police watched in a house in Newton this morning.

After more than an hour he collapsed from loss of blood and an ambulance rushed him to the Auckland Hospital. The drama was the sequel to a 24-hour police inquiry to trace a man who yesterday abandoned a .22 rifle and a woman’s coat in a telephone box near the city. The police went about 9.25 a.m. to a house where they knew a man they were seeking could be found. He refused to talk and stabbed himself with a long kitchen knife as they arrived. They tried to get him to throw down the knife and take medical aid. He refused, and sat in a chair with a knife held against his stom-

ach while he argued with police, who were at the door, way.

The man’s wife was brought to the house, as was the Rev. I. L. Sio, a minister of the Pacific Islanders’ Congregational Church, but they were unable to persuade him to surrender. The police would not allow the woman into the house. There had been recent domestic discord. The police took possession of a knife. Detective G. M. Downey gashed his hand when he smashed a glass panel in a door when he tried to talk the man into surrendering. After undergoing surgery the injured man was making satisfactory progress in hospital this afternoon.