Onlooker tells of flashing knife and friend’s death in Wellington street

Press, 16 April 1980, Page 3

Onlooker tells of flashing knife and friend’s death in Wellington street

PA’ Wellington' i John Brooke was sitting in the late afternoon sun in • Wellington on Monday, , watching a friend walk to- j wards his shop. i Mr Brooke suddenly saw 1 the flash of a big French kitchen knife as it plunged i into his friend’s side. Calling his sister, Julia 1 Brooke, a former nurse, they ] rushed to help. But their friend was to die soon after-1 wards, 1 The dead man was Miles ; lan Lars MacFarlane, aged 1 20, a university student. Mr i MacFarlane was a son of the managing director of Lion 1 Breweries, Mr John Mac Far-1 lane. He was a fourth-year 1 bachelor of commerce and i administration student at Victoria University, and was 1 a former pupil at Christ’s ’ College. 1 Accompanied by a friend, j Mr MacFarlane was walking ] down Willis Street when the incident occurred. i Mr Brooke from across s the street, saw a man walk- < ing in the same direction s

carrying a magazine or newspaper. As the man came alongside Mr MacFarlane, Mr Brooke saw a long, triangular French kitchen knife flash out from under the magazine and plunge into Mr MacFarlane’s side. “Miles just fell to the ground,” said Mr Brooke. His sister still finds it difficult to believe the way people reacted. “People standing at the lights turned round and looked at the man on the ground, and then they turned back and crossed the road,” she said. “He had a friend standing beside him calling ‘Help, help,’ and ’Somebody get him.’ But nobody was doing anything.” Mr Brooke rushed out of his -shop to follow the man with the knife, while calling to somebody else to call the police. Miss Brooke went to Mr MacFarlane. “I was the first to him, < and yet it had taken me some time to come downstairs and cross the road” she said, i

“People were right beside him but nobody went to him. “I asked somebody to give me a coat, but nobody would. Somebody else was calling ‘Get him, get him’ and I yelled out ‘Why don’t you?’ but he did not do anything.” Miss Brooke said that Mr MacFarlane was -not bleeding much, but was in obvious shock. “We could not get much out of him, he just kept asking ‘Why me?’ We asked him if he had been stabbed anywhere else, but all he would say was ‘Why me?’,” she said. Mr Brooke followed the assailant to a nearby corner, where the man stopped to read his magazine, the knife lying beside him. When the police arrived one policeman picked up the knife while the other held the man. Ambulance officers dressed the stab wound and took Mr MacFarlane to hospital, where he died soon afterwards.