Two charged after stabbing

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33693, 16 November 1974, Page 1

Two charged after stabbing

(New Zealand Press Association) WANGANUI, November 15. A group of taxi-drivers sat in the Wanganui Magistrate’s Court public gallery today as a 20-year-old man was charged with the murder, early today, of a Wanganui taxi-driver.

The dead man was Roy Bimie Harwood, aged 47, married, with two young children, of Benefield Street, Wanganui. He had been driving a taxi in Wanganui for about two years. The police this evening arrested a second person—a youth—who has been charged with murder. He will appear in the Magistrate’s Court tomorrow morning. The name of the young man who appeared in court today was suppressed in the meantime; he entered no plea to the charge. He was remanded by Mr J. C. K. Fabian, S.M., until December 3, to psychiatric hospital for a medical report. Mr Harwood died at 7.45 a.m. while undergoing emer-

gency surgery at Wanganui Hospital. He had knife wounds to the Back of his neck and another which, entering the chest from below the chin, penetrated a lung. Mr Harwood—the only driver on duty at 3 a.m.— picked up two men from a Wanganui call-booth and radioed base soon afterwards to say that he was going to the suburb of Gonville. He is believed to have been stabbed from behind. The handset was tom from his car radio. Mr Harwood turned the cab round and, bleeding profusely, drove back about half a mile to the hospital. He hit a wall near the hospital gate, backed off and drove up to the casualty department’s door. He then staggered inside and collapsed.