CONDUCT CRITICISED

Evening Post, Issue 98, 27 April 1936, Page 13

CONDUCT CRITICISED

.WITNESSES OF SMASH

MAN LEFT LYING ON ROAD

(By Telegraph—Press Association.)

CHRISTCHURCH, April 26,

"Extraordinary callousness" and "inhuman conduct" were expressions used by the Coroner, Mr. F. F. Reid, S.M., on Friday, commenting on the. actions of two young persons who had walked away after witnessing an accident in which a man was fatally injured. The inquest was into the death of Thomas Redmond Murphy, a farm labourer, of Culverden, who was found

dying on the main north road early on the morning of February 9. Murphy died soon after admission to Christchurch Hospital.

"I am concerned in this inquest only to find the cause of death," said the

Coroner at the conclusion of the evidence, "and in view of the possibility of other proceedings it might be unfair for me to comment on the evidence as a whole. There is, however, one aspect of the matter upon which I feel it my duty to comment. I refer to the extraordinary callousness displayed by the witness Raymond Leslie Moore and his companion Johanna Cecilia Hynes. On a wet, boisterous night, in the early hours of the morning, at a moment when no one else was about, they saw a violent collision between a motor-cycle and a car take place almost in front of them. They saw the cyclist fall and saw him lying on the road pinned under the cycle, and simply because the young woman not unnaturally felt a little faint they went on, leaving Murphy lying on the road. Fortunately such inhuman conduct is rare. It is true that in this case the man was so badly injured that they probably could have done very little for him, but it requires very little imagination to visualise similar circumstances where immediate attention to a person injured in an accident can be the means of saving life and. ameliorating suffering. I regret that I cannot mark my disapproval of their conduct by anything stronger than words."

The verdict was that Murphy died from fracture of the skull and laceration of the brain, caused by a collision between the motor-cycle he was riding and a motor-car driven by Alfred Cecil Sturt. ■ ,