Shotgun victim to be questioned

Press, 20 October 1980, Page 1

Shotgun victim to be questioned

Christchurch detectives yesterday waited to interview a man who was seriously ill in Princess Margaret Hospital with complications arising from a shotgun wound. The man, who was believed to be suffering from a serious form of gas gangrene, had gone first to Wellington Hospital. He was flown to Christchurch for special treatment in the new recompression chamber at Princess Margaret Hospital. When the Christchurch police have interviewed the man, they will make a report to detectives investigating the armed robbery of a post office in Auckland in which a youth, Stephen Mills, aged 15, was shot. Two masked robbers, one carrying a shotgun, burst into the post office in Churchill Avenue, Manurewa, about 8 p.m. on Friday. The shotgun was fired and the youth, a customer, was wounded in the right armpit. He was in a satisfactory condition •in Middlemore Hospital yesterday. The robbers, who had an accomplice waiting outside the post office, fled with $2000).

The officer in charge of the case, Detective Chief Inspector B. N. Middleton, said from Auckland last evening that from a police reconstruction of the robbery, it appeared that one of the robbers had been caught in the shotgun blast and had been seriously wounded. “We are naturally interested in anyone with a shotgun wound but I cannot say at this stage whether the man in Christchurch is linked with the robbery inquiry,” he said. The man could have been wounded in . a gang confrontation in Wellington or in another incident. . *: The man had his left arm amputated, yesterday and will continue to undergo oxygen treatment fpr about two hours a day for several days, according to a hospital spokesman. Gas gangrene was an infection which occurred through the inadeqdate treatment of severe wounds which were allowed to contain dead, contaminated tissue for too long, he said.

The infection was fatal if untreated and even with

oxygen treatment, which killed the infecting organism, there was a 30 per cent to 40 per cent chance of death. A taxi-driver who was paid a fare with two blood-stained $lO notes could hold the key to the investigation into the rob-: bery, reports the Press Association from Auckland.

In a fresh development in the inquiry last evening, detectives began to look for the taxi-driver, who called at the Papatoetoe Motordrome service station between midnight and 3 a.m. on Saturday. The stop, for petrol, came just a few hours after the robbery. Mr Middleton said the taxi-driver had paid for the petrol with two $lO bills stained with fresh blood. The driver had told an attendant that he had received the stained notes from his last fare.

The police yesterday also sought a youth who raised the alarm minutes before the robbery. The youth ran to a nearby dairy* to call the police after spotting masked men in a green Wolseley 1100 car outside the post office.