Man arrested on charges of murder

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33290, 30 July 1973, Page 1

Man arrested on charges of murder

Detectives arrested on Saturday evening a man. aged 22, on charges of murder, after two men had been found shot dead at Culverden early on Saturday morning.

The man had walked into the Christchurch Central Police Station in the company of two other men about 1030 a.m. on Saturday. He was arrested about 7.45 p.m., after being questioned for several hours by detectives, and will appear in the Christchurch Magistrate’s Court this morning on two charges of murder. The men found dead were NEIL ROBERT CHANT, aged 38, a truck driver, and the father of three children, of 34 Buchanans Road, Sockburn; and JAMES ALFRED BARKER, aged 21, a Canadian forestry worker, who had lived at the Balmoral forestry camp for about two years.

The police have taken possession of a .22 calibre rifle.

Mr Barker was shot in the back and in the head early on -Saturday morning. Two forestry workers found him about 4 a.m. lying in his pyjamas on the road some distance from the camp, and put him to bed without realising that he was fatally wounded. ‘‘He was then conscious and talking,” said Mr B. Corrin, one of the workers. ‘‘lt just looked as though he had been in a scrap.” Mr Barker was found dead at breakfast time by the caretaker at the camp. A window in his hut had been smashed, and a bullet casing was found by the entrance. There was blood on the grass outside the hut, and a patch of blood on the roadway 40 yards away. Detective Senior-Sergeant P. J. O’Donovan, the officer in charge of the investigation, said it was “quite possible” that Mr Barker had been involved in some kind of

altercation before he was found. Mr Chant drove a 14-ton truck delivering “The Press” and bread from Christchurch to Hanmer Springs six days a week. It is believed that he gave a lift to a hitchhiker early on Saturday morning, and that he was shot in the neck about 6 a.m. Three young men on their way to the West Coast on a shooting trip discovered Mr Chant’s body about 8 a.m., hunched up in the gateway of a house at Marble Point, seven miles from Culverden, and a few yards from the main road near the Hanmer Springs turn-off. “They passed the body and got half a mile along the road before they decided to turn back to see if it really was a body,” Mr O’Donovan said.

Police patrols were ordered to watch for Mr Chant’s truck. It was later found abandoned in Owens Terrace, off Curletts Road, Sockburn.

The bodies of the two men were found within eight miles of each other. Mr O’Donovan said that both men had been shot by small-calibre bullets.