Hanged prisoner said to be in ‘suicide squad’

Press, 23 April 1980, Page 2

Hanged prisoner said to be in ‘suicide squad’

PA Auckland A man found hanging in his Paremoremo prison cell on Monday is said to have claimed to be a member of a suicide squad during last year’s house siege in Ponsonby Road, Auckland. Brian Edward Jury, aged 25, was serving a four-year prison sentence for his part in the siege last May after pleading guilty in the Supreme Court to two charges of injuring with intent and others of possessing an offensive weapon and threatening to kill. . During the earlier Magistrate’s Court hearing, Detective. Sergeant G. R. Ruther-

ford said that when he visited the Ponsonby Road house on May 15 in con-, nection with an assault the night before, Jury had run up the stairs armed with a machete.

Jury had said he would cut the detective’s throat if he followed him, and added: “You pigs won’t take me alive — I’m in the suicide squad.” Mr Rutherford told the court then he heard Jury yell from a window at one stage that he would rather die than surrender. When the police had gained entry to the house they found Jury semi-con-s scions on the floor.-

He was given a further six-week sentence in October for an assault on an inmate in the Mount Eden Prison remand yard. On Sunday, Jury was moved to a cell in the punishment block after “creating a bit of a nuisance,” said the prison’s superintendent (Mr J. Hobson). A prison officer found his body in the cell at 12.55 p.m. on Monday hanging by a plaited sheet from a ventilator shaft.- Mr Hobson said Jury had last been seen alive about 12.30 p.m.

The police.said they were satisfied nobody else was involved in Jhe death.