FALL FROM TRAIN

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 151, 23 March 1938, Page 15

FALL FROM TRAIN

Girl Killed At Petone CORONER’S COMMENT Stating that it was a peculiar thing and could not be accounted for-, the district coroner, Mr. E. Gilbertson, at the inquest to-day at Petone on Margaret Elsie Coleman, aged 21, of Wadestown, returned a verdict that Miss Coleman was accidentally killed at Petone on March 17 by falling off a moving train. Senior-Sergeant H. C. D. Wade conducted the inquest. Thomas Timothy Saunders, chauffeur, Public Works Department, said that when walking along the Petone railway station at 4.45 p.m. on March 17 he saw a girl being dragged along by a train; her feet appeared to be caught in the gate' of a carriage. He was unsuccessful in his endeavour to draw the attention of the fireman of the train to the accident. - Lawrence Charles Noedl, porter, acting as signalman at Petone at the time, said that when the 4.41 train from Wellington stopped at the station he saw a girl alight from the front of a carriage and enter the train again on the rear of the carriage in front of the one from which she came, after she bad looked about as if in doubt as to which station she was at. He did not see her again. Bertram Allen Sargisson, stationmaster, Petone, said that in Miss Coleman’s handbag he found a return railway ticket from Wellington to Lower Hutt. The train concerned went to Wellington and on its return he found a shoe which had been caught in a chain on a carriage next to the one the girl was seen to enter. The chain was a dummy coupling forming a loop. He could not suggest any way in which the girl got there accidentally, replied Sargisson to the coroner. He would not say it was deliberate. She may have dropped something and gone down for It. It was not possible for her to slip Into the position in which she was, although she might have slipped when she went to get some article she had dropped. A passenger on the train who alighted at: Petone, Jack Beaumont Hepworth, schoolteacher, said he noticed a woman’s body hanging from the front of a carriage as the train passed him in pulling out from the station. Her head and shoulders were dragging along the sleepers and one leg appeared to be caught on to something just in front of the carriage platform, she was dragged at least 60 yards before being caught in the ppints and dragged completely under the train. It appeared that four carriages passed over the body. He shouted when he saw the girl, in an endeavour to attract the attention of someone on the train, but was unsuccessful. He heard no cry from the girl. It was 150 yards from where the girl re-entered the train to where her body was picked up, said Constable G. Harris.