ALLEGED MURDER

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 81, 7 April 1931, Page 10

ALLEGED MURDER

TWO MEN CHARGED

FALL FROM A CAR

EVIDENCE ABOUT A

STRUGGLE

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

TIMAEU, This Day.

Following an inquest this morning touching the death of Robert Galvin Rahilly Nisbett, aged 26, who died in Timaru Public Hospital at 4 a.m. yesterday as the result of an alleged assault with robbery in a motor-car in Conoor road on Saturday afternoon, John Henry Fitzgerald and Thonras James Cox were formally charged with murder and remanded to appear at the Magistrate's Court on Wednesday, loth April.

Evidence was given at the inquest before a Justice of the Peace and a jury of six to the effect that the deceased had been seen struggling with another man in a car coming down the hill in Conoor road.

According to the depositions of two boys, ag.ed 12 and 11 respectively, the deceased was scon to be endeavouring to get out of the car, which was travelling fast. Fitzgerald held him from behind. Ho apparently fell, and tho wheel of the car passed over his left thigh, which Dr. R. D. King stated was reduced to pulp.

When Constable W. Dcvino arrived on tho scene there was no sign of Fitzgerald or Cox, whose car was subsequently found further down the road round a corner. . Fitzgerald made a bid to escape, and was arrested after a grim struggle. In his dying depositions taken on Sunday evening at the Public Hospital, Nisbett stated that ho was struck twice on tho jaw by Fitzgerald, but to-day Drs. King and M'Kenzie said that they did not notice cuts or bruises on tho deceased's face. They admitted to Inspector A. S. Bird, who handled the case for tho police, that they had not looked for signs of an assault.

The jury, after a short retirement, returned, a verdict that the deceased died from loss of blood and shock caused by a car accident in Conoor road.