CYCLIST’S DEATH

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 July 1936, Page 5

CYCLIST’S DEATH

TRUCK PASSENGERS’ DENIALS

[PEK PRESS ASSOCIATION.]

NEW PLYMOUTH, July 22.

Under the strain of examination, a witness practically collapsed during the inquest and the hearing to-day of the charge of negligent driving causing death, against Samuel Edward George Hawke, at New Plymouth. The witness was a farmer named William Evans, who was a passenger in a motor truck, driven by Hawke, on the night of the accident.

Mr R. 11. Quilliam, who appeared for the Crown, was permitted to treat Evans as hostile, and it. was after Evans had denied the truth of unsigned statements which he had made io the police on the night, of the accident, that the examination became insistent. Evans showed signs of illness. He was assisted from the box and he slumped into a chair. He was revived and continued his evidence. Evans denied that. Hawke’s truck collided' with anything on the night that the motor-cyclist, Leonard Wylie Blanchard, was killed, and Thomas Jury was injured. Another passenger in Hawke’s truck, Ronald B. Gray, also denied that the truck had collided with a motor-cycle. He admitted that the truck went partly into a ditch, and brushed the bank a mile or two from the scene of the accident. Lengthy' evidence regarding damage to the truck was given by a motor engineer. The evidence had not been concluded when the Court adjourned till to-morrow.