ACCIDENTS AND DEATHS

Evening Star, Issue 22718, 4 August 1937, Page 12

ACCIDENTS AND DEATHS

BOY DROWNED IN CREEK. George Ropata, aged five, the second son of Mr and Mrs M. Ropata, was drowned in the main creek running through the pa at Little River (Canterbury) yesterday afternoon. The hoy bowled a motor tyre along a log crossing the river and followed it. He fell into 10ft of water. Another boy ran for help, which arrived too late. ENGINE CLEANER BURNT. Ernest Anderson, a young man residing at 24 Lees street, was admitted to Hospital at 2.15 p.m. to-day with burns on the neck received when live ashes fell out of a locomotive he was cleaning at the engine sheds. SUICIDE BY POISONING. “It seems I was never meant to have any luck,” was the .tragic sentence in a note left by Reuben David Jacobsen, a painter, aged 35, who was found dead in a bedroom of his house at Morningside shortly before noon on Saturday. A doctor was summoned, and found a strong smell of a powerful poison in the room, also in a glass and on the dead man’s lips. At the inquest to-day the widow gave evidence that her relations with her husband were normally friendly. She was away shopping when his death occurred. He had never stated his intention to take his life. A step-daughter, aged 15, said that she saw her father return from the city, and later saw him with a glass containing two lumps of a white substance. He retired to his room, telling her he did not wish to be disturbed. She heard him groan, and found him lying on the floor. She called a neighbour, a doctor, and the police. The coroner found that death was due to suicide by poisoning.—Auckland Press Association.