Friends bid farewell to attack victim

Press, 4 September 1980, Page 1

Friends bid farewell to attack victim

PA Auckland “I heard a young girl had been attacked, not her name, but somehow I knew it was Jackie: we were that close,” said Julie Manning yesterday as she recalled her long friendship with Jacqueline Hazel ; Blunden, who died in Auckland Hospital last Friday from head injuries suffered when she was assaulted in Takapuna on August 23. The parents and relatives of the dead girl were joined by niany of "her friends at the North Shore Crematorium yesterday morning to say their final goodbyes. . . • Miss Blunden, aged 16, and; Miss . Manning, aged 21,, had. planned to hitchhiketogether round New Zealand. 1 They had been counting the days to their holiday. : .-

■a- “Now that’s .gone: so has rJabkie,’’ T said; Miss Manning. “I . won’t go alone, nor hitch rides again.”

, Miss Manning was with Miss Blunden until about 11 p.m. on the night she went to the Kicks Nightclub. Miss ?. Blunden, of Northcote, was hitchhiking from there when she was attacked and left lying unconscious in a pool of blood about 2.50 a.m.

A key witness was last night helping the police to compose an Identikit picture of the attacker. The witness told detectives that he had seen the attacker only moments before Miss Blunden had been assaulted. He had seen ,the offender within a metre.of where she was later found in Anzac Street about 400 metres from the nightclub. In, the inquiry into; the rape and killing of Alicia O’Reilly,-aged six, a body hair which may-lead to the offender will’ be sent to Australia fortesting in a nuclear reactor. - s

The man heading the inquiry, Detective Inspec-

tor B. E. Matthews, said it would be up to two months before the test results were known. The hair had been found at the O’Reilly house in Canal Road where Alicia had been killed.

In the meantime the police would check information given by a suspect. “This man is a prime suspect but I do'not wish the public to settle on him as our man,” said Mr Matthews.

The suspect, aged in his early 20s, had been-picked up in the Avondale area last week. The suspect was now “out of the area” but Mr Matthews would not comment on- whether he had been detained. The suspect had not offered an alibi. ■ > Mr Matthews did not expect ah arrest to be made in the near future. The results of tests concerning the suspect would, not be available until at least next week.