Pair attack traffic man, crash car

Press, 22 August 1979, Page 3

Pair attack traffic man, crash car

PA Hamilton A Hamilton traffic officer was kicked in the groin when he was attacked by two men in a Waikato Hospital car park early yesterday. Another officer dislocated a knee when his motor-cycle hit a parked car as he swerved to avoid the men when they crashed a car into a drum as they tried to escape. A police patrol arrested the men. It was later found that the car they had been in, a Morris Oxford, had been taken on Monday night from Tokoroa about 3km from where a Toyota car believed to have been used in a Tauranga attack on two policemen on Sunday was abandoned. One of the Tauranga policemen was beaten with a chain and was still in hospital yesterday after undergoing surgery for a fractured skull. The other policeman suffered cuts and contusions to his head and body. They were attacked while investigating reports that men were acting suspiciously at Oropi, near Tauranga. One of the men arrested yesterday was later charged in connection with the Tauranga attack. He was also charged with theft, injuring with intent, threatening to kill, and unlawfully taking a motorvehicle in connection with the Hamilton incident. The second man was charged with injuring with intent and unlawfully getting into a motor-vehicle. The attack on the traffic officer, Roger Leaf, aged 24,

happened about 7.45 a.m. after he had stopped a car in the car park because its occupants were not wearing seat-belts. When the occupants realised the officer was checking on the registration number they grabbed him and ripped out the patrol car’s radio-telephone handpiece. Witnesses said one of the men had had a heavy motorcycle chain draped around his neck when he had attacked the officer. The Hamilton District Traffic Superintendent (Mr Bob Evered) said that in spite of the intense pain in the officer’s groin, the officer had pursued the two men. As their car had driven off he had clung on but had let go as it had gathered speed. At this point another traffic officer, John Pullen, alerted by Mr Leaf’s earlier radio call, had arrived by motor-cycle and had pursued the escaping vehicle across the car park. When it had crashed into a drum he had been forced to swerve his machine in loose metal and had hit a parked car, injuring his knee. Mr Leaf had run to the crashed car to arrest one of the occupants while the other had fled on foot. As both officers had been struggling on the ground their calls for help had galvanised bystanders into ac tion. A hospital laundry manager and other hospital staff had run after the man who had been fleeing from the crashed car.

The man had snatched a bicycle and had been riding through the hospital grounds when police had intercepted and arrested him. In a separate case in Auckland, two members of an Otara gang have been jailed for holding up motorists with an imitation shotgun and demanding money. Before Mr K. L. Richardson, S.M., in the Otahuhu Magistrate’s Court were Sydney Mare Kire Tahere, aged 24, a ganger, and Lolie Neva, aged 19, a machine operator. Tahere was jailed for three years on the menaces charge and three months on the firearm count and Neva was jailfed for two years and three months respectively on the same charges, the sentences to be cumulative.