GIRL ASSAULTED

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 August 1929, Page 12

GIRL ASSAULTED

TWO MEN IN CAB.

. PERTH, July 19. Further particulars regarding the assault by two young men on a girl, aged 15, last night in a sparsely-popu-lated locality show that the girl was walking along Riverside-road from Canning Bridge, towards Como, when a taxi-car that had been stolen at Fremantle, stopped beside her. One of the men in the car asked her whether she would care to be driven home, but she replied that it did not matter because she lived, nearby. The men continued to ask her to go for a ride with them, but she hurried along the road. They followed her in the car, pulled up alongside her, jumped out of the car, and forcibly took her into a thicket beside the river, where they held her by the neck to prevent her from screaming. The girl whs brutally assaulted, after which the men left her on the ground, rushed back to the car, and drove off at high speed. The girl hurried horn© and told her mother, who immediately reported the matter to detectives.

At Perth Hospital it was found that the girl was badly bruised. The men first came under notice last evening when they entered a Fremantle-Perth taxi-car, which was standing bn the rank, waiting for the time to leave for Perth. The driver was standing nearby when the taxi moved off rapidly and soon reached high speed. The theft was at once reported to the police. Later at Palmyra, on the Canning-road, the car was travelling so fast that a constable tried to stop it, but the pace Wasfenot reduced. Detectives are satisfied that this car subsequently figured in the outrage.

This afternoon the taxi-cab was found near the corner of Loftus and Carr streets, Leederville, in tint western portion of the City of Perth. The number-plate had been removed and replaced by another. A man reported to detectives to-day that at midnight he saw a car similar to the missing one near Loftusstreet. Two men, who were in it, were trying to induce two girls to go for a drive as he approached on his bicycle, but when he was close they switched off the car lights and drove away.