AN OPEN VERDICT

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 259, 29 July 1937, Page 8

AN OPEN VERDICT

Woman’s Fatal Injuries KNOCKED DOWN BY CAR By Telegraph—Press Association. Auckland, July 28. An open verdict was returned by the coroner, Mr. F. K. Hunt, at an inquest concerning the death on the Victoria Road, Belmont, on May 29, of Mrs. Ena Elizabeth Hunt, aged 26, who was struck by a motor-car as she was crossing the road about 7.50 p.m. John Albert Gibson, aged 20, driver of the ear, said that, the car was an old model which he purchased two weeks previously for £2. The headlights were in order and the car bad a certificate of fitness. With three friends he was driving from Devonport to attend a party at Takapuna. The car was travelling at a speed of 20 miles an hour on the down grade when suddenly he saw two women on the road. He brought the car to a stop but not before it had struck both women, practically at the moment be saw them. He found that Mrs. Hunt was fatally injured and her companion injured slightly. To the coroner, he said his party was not laughing and talking at the moment of the accident. He thought that, the women must have stepped from the footpath directly in front of the car. He bad just emerged from a sodium lighting area and he had since been told by a bus driver that the effect on a driver was to cause a black spot at times. John J. Gamble, who was in the front seat of the car, corroborated this evidence. Two young women who witnessed the accident from the opposite side of the road, said that Mrs. Hunt and her companion had been laughing and talking as they walked along the footpath, and were arm in arm as they stepped on to the road. There was a good deal of traffic at the time. The police evidence showed that the car’s footbrake after the accident appeared to be defective. The coroner returned a verdict that Mrs. Hunt died as the result of injuries received by being knocked down by a motor-ear driven by John Albert Gibson. He said that in view of possible further developments he would not make any comment.