Punch by policeman?

Press, 9 December 1981, Page 10

Punch by policeman?

PA Auckland An Auckland University student has told the District Court at Auckland that she had been punched in the face by a plainclothes policeman during an anti-Springbok tour demonstration in Khyber- Pass Road on August 5. ' Lelesio Stowers aged 25, a police constable, of Auckland, had pleaded not guilty to a charge of assaulting Susan Bradford, on August 5. Judge Bergin refused an application for suppression of name, saying it was appropriate that suspicion should not be attached to anyone else. The prosecution alleged that the incident occurred as the demonstrators were

moving back up Khyber Pass Road towards Symonds Street after a confrontation with the police outside Lion Breweries. He said the complainant suffered a severe injury to the face, upper left cheek, and left eye. Mrs Bradford told the court that she had been with a group of protesters spraypainting a slogan on a pillar of the motorway overbrioge in Khyber Pass Road. She saw a friend of hers, Zoe Truell, knocked to the ground on the other side of the road and had gone to help her. But when she was half-way across, the man who had pushed Miss Truell had punched her in the face. She fell, and blacked out for several moments.

Mrs Bradford said the man was Polynesian, had a moustache, and was stocky and about her height. She said she could not positively identify him because she saw him for only a few seconds. Her husband. William Miles Bradford,-said he saw his wife run towards Miss Truell, and when she got close a man had stepped out and had punched her in the face. He said he ran across to the man and had grappled with him, and was restrained by those around him. He identified Stowers as the man. Several other demonstrators and policemen appeared as witnesses for the prosecution. The case is continuing.