WITNESS’S NEAR COLLAPSE

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 254, 23 July 1936, Page 2

WITNESS’S NEAR COLLAPSE

Negligent Driving Charge DENIES TRUCK STRUCK A MOTOR-CYCLE By Telegraph—Press Association. New Plymouth, July 22. Under the strain of examination a witness practically collapsed during the inquest and hearing of a charge of negligent driving causing death against Samuel Edward George Hawke, at New Plymouth Witness was a farmer named William Evans, who was a passenger in a motor-truck driven by Hawke on the night of the accident. Mr. R. 11. Qullliam, who appeared for the Crown, was permitted to treat Evans as hostile, and it was after Evans had denied the truth of unsigned statements he had made to the police on the night of the accident that the examination became insistent. Evans showed signs of illness and was assisted from the box and slumped into a chair. He was revived and continued his evidence. He denied that Hawke’s truck collided with anything on the night that the motor-cyclist, Leonard Wylie Blanchard, was killed and Thomas Jury injured. Another passenger iu Hawke’s truck, Ronald B. Gray, also denied that the truck had collided with a motor-cycle. He admitted that the truck went partly into a ditch and brushed a bank a mile or two from the scene of the accident. Lengthy evidence regarding damage to the truck was given by a motor engineer. The evidence had not been concluded when the court adjourned till to-mor-row.