INQUEST ORDERED

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 4, 5 July 1938, Page 13

INQUEST ORDERED

TWO MISSING MEN

KOPUAWHARA VICTIMS

Although their bodies have never been recovered, instructions have been received by the Coroner, Mr. V. E. Winter, to conduct an inquest on Ivan Martinac and Roderick Douglas Neish, who .were among the victims- of the Kopuawhara disaster on February 19, when the No. 4 railway construction camp was overwhelmed by flood waters, and 21 people, including a young woman, were swept to their deaths, states a Wairoa correspondent.

The bodies of 19 of the . victims were recovered, and inquests were concluded Some time ago. A diligent search was made for the other two bodies, but no trace of them has ever been discovered. It is surmised that they were either buried in silt, which covered practically the whole of the Kopuawbara Valley to a depth, of many feet, or carried : out to sea.

The instructions for the holding of inquests without the bodies have been issued by the Solicitor-General, Mr. H. V. Cornish, under section three of the Coroners Amendment Act, 1930.

. In a letter to the. Coroner, the Crown Solicitor at", Wellington states that it is not usual to direct the holding of an inquest pursuant to section three unless there are grounds for believing that such a cpurse is necessary either in the public interest or for some private purpose which may properly be entertained. In the present case any matter of public interest would have been investigated at the inquests touching the deaths of the others drowned in the catastrophe, and it did not appear that any question of succession of property. arose. Nevertheless, in the peculiar circumstances in this case, it was considered a proper one for the holding of an inquest.