MISSING PRISONERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 84, 5 October 1940, Page 13

MISSING PRISONERS

A TRACE OF THREE

CAR ABANDONED IN SCRUB

(By Telegraph—Press Association.)

AUCKLAND, October 4,

An observant young woman who. saw. an abandoned Morris car about a mile from: Silverdale today,- and. reports of thefts of petrol and clothing from two places at Massey ; during Thursday night, gave the police a fresh trail of. the four men who escaped from the Auckland prison on Tuesday night. Motor patrols and search parties have since been ranging far and wide.

The car was one stolen from Mr. A. M. Jackson's garage at Orakei Road, Remeura, early on Thursday morning, and had evidently travelled over rough territory. When Mr. Jackson saw his car at the central police station this afternoon, he found the panels badly scratched as though, the machine had been forced through scrub. The exhaust pipe was bent and the undercarriage coated with mud. The petrol tank was dry. On the flooring of the car were several sets oi muddy footprints. A seven-year-old schoolboy, John Small, who lives on the Dairy FlatSilverdale Road about two miles south of Silverdale, said that while he was on his way to school at about 8 o'clock on Thursday morning he noticed three men get out of a small motor-car and look underneath the concrete bridge just before the bypass to Kaukapakapa. He said they then looked intc some scrub at the roadside, got into the car, and drove down the bypass.

He was quite sure, he said, that the. were only three men in the car, one in the driving seat and two in*the back seat, and he saw sufficient, of the driver's face to describe him. He told his mother about the "incident when he reached home that afternoon, but she attached little significance to it till this morning, and when her husband later heard that Mr. Jackson's car had been stolen he advised the police.

Just before midday a young woman living on a farm' along the Kaukapa kapa Road saw a small car abandoned at the roadside about 50 yards from the main road. One door was wide open as though someone had left hurriedly. When she reached Silverdale shortly afterwards she and a friend discussed the matter and the young woman had. copies of.the number of Mr. Jackson's missing car. She returned to the spot where she saw the car and found it had two number-plates screwed together on the back and one at the front. The front one corresponded with the number she had a copy of. She turned the screws on the back bracket, lifted the top plate, and found that the lower one also corresponded with that of the missing car. She notified the police shortly afterwards. Meanwhile there is very little change in the condition of the three warders who were assaulted and injured. Mr. Crawford, „aged 62, who was severely injured about the head, is still unconscious.