DOMINION ITEMS

Greymouth Evening Star, 4 March 1943, Page 2

DOMINION ITEMS

QUARRYMAN KILLED. WHANGAREI, March 4. While sheltering during blasting at Waro limestone quarry, yesterday, Walter Green, 53, married with four children, was struck on the face and head by Hying rock. He was taken to the hospital but died from shock. YOUTH’S OFFENCES AUCKLAND, March 3. Two years’ reformative detention was imposed in the Magistrate’s Court to-day by Mr. J. Morling, S.M. on a 17-j-year-old boy, Darcy Gordon Buckman, who faced charges of theft and false pretences. The police said that Buckman arrived in Auckland from Wellington with an habitual criminal and the two took a room in a city lodg-ing-house. The boy had assumed the name of Harry Vincent. Three days after his arrival, Buckman stole £2 and a Post Office savings account book from the wallet of a companion, and forged a withdrawal slip for £l5, the amount being paid out to him. On February 22 he forged another withdrawal slip for £lB/10/-. Later that day his companion missed the bank book and reported it to the Savings Bank. The following morning Buckman tried to withdraw a further £lB/10/-, but was arrested. He admitted the crimes, and said he had given £lO to another man, a criminal, who is now serving a term in prison. Buckman had previously been in trouble for theft at Hastings in 1939, and had spent nine months at the Weraroa training farm. PLANE TRAGEDY CHRISTCHURCH, March 3. An inquiry was held in Christchurch to-day in the Coroner’s Court before Mr. F. F. Reid, S.M., into the deaths of Pilot Officer Walter Keith Webb and Leading Aircraftman lan Campbell Mclntyre, which occurred at Lincoln on December 18. “The aircraft in which they were flying certainly broke up in the air,” said Flight Lieutenant F. L. Goldsmith, of a South Island station, “but I am not in a position to say what the primary cause was.” Pilot Officer Webb was described as a fully qualified instructor, and Leading Aircraftman Mclntyre was a pupil. The flight on which they were engaged when they were killed was a normal training flight, and the weather was good. Royal New Zealand Air Force personnel testified that the machine was airworthy and that it had been tested.

Flight Lieutenant Goldsmith said that he had examined the wreckage, and he considered that several parts were faulty. This was possibly due, he added, to glueing when the aircraft was being manufactured in England. Mr. Reid: That would not be apparent in any ordinary service examination? —No, it would not. The Coroner found that these men had met their deaths from multiple injuries when flying in an aircraft which became uncontrollable and crashed.