TWO BANDITS SHOT

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 January 1933, Page 9

TWO BANDITS SHOT

POLICE DISGUISED AS LOVERS Two bandits were shot and killed in dramatic circumstances by policemen disguised as lovers in a lonely lane near Eriel, New Jersey. The police had been assigned to break up a gang accused of holding up and robbing couples in motor cars parked at a wooded spot on the Davistown Road. The police, Austin, Osborne and Hossack, for three nights waited at the spot in the hope of encountering the robbers, but their uniforms apparently frightened them away. They Anally set a trap.. Osborne, wearing plain clothes, sat with Austin, dressed as a woman, in a close-fitting dark gown, a wig and a veil in a car parked at the roadside, while Hossack, armed with a repeating shotgun, concealed himself at the edge of the wood. The police had scarcely completed their arrangements when a large open car, with at least four occupants, drove up. Two strangers alighted and approached the supposed lovers. One stranger carried a revolver and the other a shotgun. “Listen, you two!” cried the foremost of the stranger, “Pile out! Hands up and no nonsense!” The bandits had walked right into the trap. Osborne’s reply was to raise his revolver and fire. His first shot passed through the man carrying the shotgun, and before the stranger’s body struck the ground the policeman fired twice more, one of his bullets piercing the man’s head and the other lodging in his chest.

The second stranger, whose revolver had been covering Austin, the supposed woman, then fired, but his bullet went wild. As he did so, Hossack, from his ambush in the woods, came into action, and before the robber had time to fire again he collapsed with nine bullets in his body. The confederates of the two dead men had by now begun firing from their car, but ceased and drove furiously away when all the three policemen concentrated their lire on the machine. A general alarm was sent out for the robber car, all hospitals in the State were notified, and all garages were warned to watch for a car pierced with bullet-holes. The State prosecuting attorney declares that the policemen acted in the line of their duty.