Battered man was close to safety

Press, 29 July 1989, Page 1

Battered man was close to safety

By

BARRY CLARKE

The Christchurch man bashed in an Auckland park on Thursday was only a few minutes away from the safety of his home. Gregory Dean Chapman, aged 26, is on a life-support system in Auckland Hospital, but has been declared brain-dead and is not expected to live. Mr Chapman, who has been living in Auckland for 2i/> years, was attacked by two men in Big King Reserve,- Mount Eden, about 10 p.m., a short distance from his flat in the suburb of Sandringham. “He suffered savage head injuries. It was a horrific attack,” said Detective Senior-Sergeant Brian Kemp, of Auckland, last evening. Mr Chapman had been drinking with friends at two jnner-city hotels during Thursday evening, said Detective Senior-Sergeant Kemp. He left intending to catch a bus home. Mr Chapman was just a 10minute walk from home when the attack occurred. Detective Senior-Sergeant Kemp said the police had positive leads. Mr Chapman was a former pupil of Hillmorton High School. He played for the school’s first rugby team, the Suburbs club,

and lower-grade rugby league for Halswell before moving to Auckland. He was captain of the school basketball team, played cricket for St Albans and was a good tennis player. Twenty detectives are working on the case, which is being treated as a murder inquiry. Last evening they were tracing Mr Chapman’s movements before the attack, and making door-to-door inquiries. “He was a very sporting type

of person. He played rugby and league up here and was wellliked by all his associates,” said Detective Senior-Sergeant Kemp. The beating, inflicted by two athletically built men, possibly carrying wooden clubs or batons, was seen by a man, aged 73. The witness, afraid to be named, rushed into his back garden when he heard the “horrible screams of someone in pain,” he told the “Auckland Star” newspaper. At first he thought someone was chopping wood or beating an animal in the park, which backs on to the end of his garden. “I was watching someone being beaten to death. There was this awful, horrible, thump, thump, thump, the most dreadful sound I’ve ever heard,” he said. The beating lasted 10 minutes, and continued after the victim stopped crying for help. The witness did not call out or intervene because he feared the attackers would turn on him. When the beating stopped, the two. men casually strolled out of the small, unlit park, he said. The police were called and found Mr Chapman unconscious and battered. He was nearly dead, but was resuscitated by ambulance officers and taken to hospital.