LICENSEE KILLED

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 November 1923, Page 6

LICENSEE KILLED

FALL FROM HOTEL. (Per Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, Nov. 5. Before he could give any statement as to his fall from a window on the second storey of the Sefton Hotel, Francis John Vliestra, the licensee, died early this morning, an hour after medical aid had been secured. At 11 o’clock last night Mrs. Vliestra, who had .retired' at ten o’clock to her room, adjoining her husband’s heard a persistent knocking at the door below. She went to see who the person was, and found it was her husband in his night attire. He stated that he had fallen from a window. He was able to walk, with Mrs. Vliestra’s assistance. When medical attendance arrived, Vliestra was in ' a serious state of collapse, and beyond medical aid. The window from which Vliestra fell is in a passage round a corner from his own room. He injured, asliead in the fall, and this injury, associated with shock, is supposed to have caused his death. The hotel was to have been handed over to a new licensee to-morrow. The disposal of his interest in the hotel at a considerable loss, the death of one of his children, and his own weak health, had made Vliestra very depressed for some time. He leaves a family of seven, the youngest being fifteen years of age. At the inquest, the evidence showed he suffered from asthma. Dr. Will stated, that during an attack of asthma, a patient usually got what was called “air-hunger,” and would go to an open window. The jury found that the deceased met his death through injuries received by falling out of an upstairs bedroom window. HINDU’S DEATH. WELLINGTON, Nov. 5. The Hindu, Dayal Moya died as the result of a fall from the Arcadia Hotel, when he was cleaning windows.