Arrests after man’s death

Press, 22 February 1980, Page 1

Arrests after man’s death

A fugitive car flashed past a police road block with centimetres to spare after a middle-aged man had been found killed in a shop in Lincoln Road, Christchurch, late last evening. The two young men in the car had been chased by the police at speeds of up to 150km/h from Christchurch to the Rakaia River bridge, where they narrowly escaped death by squeezing through the gap between a police patrol car and the side of the bridge.

The chase ended when the men turned about at Ashburton and headed back towards Christchurch but found the bridge blocked by three police cars. They gave up without a struggle, and were still being questioned by detectives, at Christchurch early this morning. The police had not released the name of the dead man, who was aged about 55, early this morning. Detective Inspector R. G. McMeeking, the officer

in charge of the case, said the dead man had suffered head injuries. The police were searching for a blunt instrument, he said. Just after 9 p.m. a shop assistant had called the police to say that a middleaged man had been assaulted by two men in a shop in Lincoln Road. The first policemen on the scene found the man dead on the floor of the shop.

Onlookers said that the two men had driven off at high speed, and were able

to give a good description of their car. The description was broadcast by the police. All available police cars were sent to the area, but the suspect vehicle was finally spotted by a taxidriver. Pursued by several patrol cars, the men headed down the Main South Road out of Christchurch at high speed. - Police stations as far south as Timaru were alerted, and the police scrambled to set up road blocks.

After the men dodged the patrol car on the Rakaia River bridge, three more police cars were lined up across it. “For some reason they (the men) turned about just the other side of Ashburton and headed back. There was no way they could get past the road block die second time,” a police spokesman said. The shop where the body was found was still cordoned off at 1 a.m. while detectives and uniformed policemen searched the scene.