W’TON MURDER CHARGES

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 April 1943, Page 2

W’TON MURDER CHARGES

INJURED WOMAN’S EVIDENCE

AMPLIFIER USED

WELLINGTON, April 1. The Magistrate’s Court proceedings in the hearing of' the charges against John Sidney Crawford, 26, arising from the shooting in the Terrace Gardens were continued this afternoon. Constable Illes said that approached the window he heard a woman’s voice say, ‘’Oh don’t. I’ll marry you.” He looked in and saw the accused standing at the foot of . a single bed, holding an automatic pistol. He appeared to be working the breech. A woman was sitting on a single bed near the window, and a Marine was lying on his back alongside the bed. The accused saw the witness at the window and said, “Get out,” and levelled the pistol. The witness ducked. The shot broke the glass in the window frame close to the witness’s right shoulder. The witness caught a glimpse of the girl in the room. She appeared to be sitting quite normally. When he was arrested on corning out of the bathroom,’ accused was unarmed. He made no reply when he was asked where the pistol was and what explanation he had for the shooting. In reply to a question, the witness said that the accused appeared to be dazed and under great mental stress. He was not drunk, but his breath had the smell of stale liquor. In the bathroom Salmon was sitting in a ( chair. She had several wounds about i the shoulders and neck. She was I bleeding freely and was unable to 1 speak. ’On a single bed opposite the ! window in Salmon’s room he found an automatic pistol. The breech was open and empty, and the magazine • was also empty. In all, he found 1 three empty cartridge cases and two : spent bullets.' When spoken to, accused just grimaced and had an air I of resignation. For the next witness, Hazel Josephine Salmon, the Court was cleared of the public on the advice of a doctor, who, with a hospital nurse, was in attendance. Witness gave her evidence in a whispered voice through a microphone and amplifying apparatus. She said that she first met Crawford about March of last year. She moved to No. 17 Terrace Gardens before Christmas. She met the accused on the afternoon of January 5 and again at night time at the Orient Cafe, when she asked him for a loan of £l, and he gave her £5. He showed her a gun, which he had in his hip pocket, and said he was going to blow out his brains. She saw the gun’s number, 773061, The gun (produced) was like that which he had before they left the cafe. Witness told the accused that he could walk home with her provided he gave her the bullets. Fie took the magazine out of the gun and gave it to her and also a bullet out of his pocket. Witness gave the magazine to a waiter, and the accused put the gun back in his pocket. Accused walked home with her and left at 11 p.m. He told her at the house that lie had been offered a job on a boat, but was not going to take it. Witness asked him again what he intended doing with the gun, and ho said he might shoot himself and might shoot hoi’: ho did not know.

ACCUSED’S CALL. Next clay, January 6, she receiveci a telegram from the accused. . It read: “Meet me to-night at the Orient Cafe at 7.30.” She did not go. Accused came to Terrace Gardcris about 9.30 p.m. Witness was in her room, and also there were Sparrow and Lee _(two Marines) and Miss Turnbull. ' Accused, who had three Englishmen with him, knocked at her door. One of them said they had a bottle of whisky and sherry, and wanted to come into her room to drink it. Witness went up to the landlady, Mrs. Last, to ask if the men could go up and drink in her room. Witness told them they could go up as long as they did not stay too late, and took them up. Accused said he was going away in the morning on a Dutch snip, and the witness said, “Thank goodness. When you’ve gone I’ll bo able to breathe freely.” She may have mentioned the number of the gun to him. In the previous June she had gone out with an American, and the accused gave her two black eyes. Fie used to argue quite a lot with her. She wanted to go out to theatres and dances, and he would not go. Her feel mgs on the night of January 6 were that she had told him before that she was sick of him, and did not want to go out with him, but was prepared to be friendly. He accepted that. There was no question of saying good-bye then, but later she went to shake hands with Crawford, seeing that he was going away, but ho declined. She mav have said something else to him. She did not remember calling him any names. She might have, and probably did. When she returned to her room Miss Turnbull and Lee had left. Sparrow was still there. The next time she saw accused was when he came in the window. Before that he was in the hall outside her door, calling to her: “Come out and take what is coming to you.” Witness did not know a Marine called Geti, and no Marine came to her door before the accused did. When Crawford called to her to come out she told him he could stand and call all night if he wanted to. .She did not hear him again till a Marine knocked on the door, and she opened it. The Marino got about two steps and he fell after she heard a gun go off. She could not see who had the cun, the light in the passage being out. She shut the door and locked it, and put the light out. Sparrow pulled the Marine under the bed, and told witness to lie on the floor. Meanwhile accused had fired through the keyhole, but no one was hit. The person who had fired the shot went round to the window nearest the door, broke it, and got in. The light in the room was out. and up to that stage about four shots had been fired. Crawford was the man who came through the window, and he flashed a torch round the room. Witness heard the gun go off again. The accused was then standing just inside the window. Witness stepped out from behind the dressing table and grabbed the barrel of the gun. She called to Sparrow to come and help her as she had the gun. She just had hold of it. Crawford then put the light on and said: “He won’t help you. I’ve shot him.” When she saw that Sparrow had been shot she let go the barrel of the gun. Crawford walked past her and over to the inside wall. Witness got down on the floor by the other Marine, behind the bed and by the window. Accused said to her: “Come out. It is your turn next. She pleaded with him not to shoot her, and to think of her mother. The accused said he had done all the thinking he was going to clo. She asked accused to help the Marine, and Crawford said he could only help him.by putting another bullet in himAccused then sat down on the bed and started to count the bullets he had left. The accused said he needed them all for her and himself. The witness asked him if lie would give her a cigarette before he shot her. The accused threw her over a packet of cigarettes and some matches, saying: “That’s right, be sensible.” SHOOTING OF WITNESS. I Witness stood up behind the bed and had lust lit a cigarette when he shot her in the neck. Accused was

sitting on the other bed when he fired. Just before she was given the cigarette, Geti got up and walked in front of him and fell over the arm of a chair. Witness, when she was hit, fell behind the bed. Accused got up and came round to the back of her. She asked him to get her some air. He replied that she did not need air, as she was dying. She asked him if he would help her, and then he shot her through the arm as he was standing at the back of her. She remembered him getting out of the •window, but did not know where he went. She must have lost consciousness for a while, and then she tried to get some blankets off the bed to cover up the Marine. She could not get them off, as her arm was painful. She tried to unlock the door, but could not. She put her left hand on her right shoulder and got out of the window on to the verandah. She went in the front door, which was open, but was shot through the shoulder. She did not see anybody. She remembered netting half-way up the stairs and finding the accused sitting on the stairs. She thought he was trying to choke her. He had her by the throat. Then he picked her up and earned her upstairs to the bathroom and sat her on a chair. The accused shut the door. A tap was running, and he was looking through his money for pennies. He did not try to wash her. He went out of the room and was not long out when two Marines came m, put her on the floor and then a stretcher, and she went to hospital. The first shot hit her in the neck, the second in the upper left arm, and the third hit the right shoulder and the ring finger of the left hand. Mr. W. J. Stacey (for the accused): Is' it correct that you have said you hope to see him hanged for it;—No, 1 have not. Hanging is too good Lor him. Crawford, she added, had complained to her about her relations with a Filipino, but he had not complained to her about other men. Marriage had been discussed with Crawford last year, but she had never given him any promise. She Had taken money from Crawlord. accused-committed

WELLINGTON, April 2

Evidence in the murder case was eiven to-day by Detective Urquhait, who searched the room at No. 1/. He said he found a bullet case and four pieces of bullet casing. In the wardrobe there was a man’s blue felt hat and hanging in the hall a na yy bluo coat stained in front with what apneared to be blood. There was a torch in the right-hand pocket and a piece of glass in the other pocket. Senior-Sergeant G. G. Kelly <.escribed a pistol, 773061 engraved U.S. property and U.S. Army. The state of the vzeapon. showed it had been used io smash a way through a glass door or window. He said the bullet holes from which the bullets had not been recovered, and the recovered bullets, accounted for eight shots, the capacity of the pistol. A live round in the passage was the ninth. Dr. Lynch, pathologist, described the wounds of Sparrow. Detective-Sergeant Compton, w ho was in charge of the investigation, said that Crawford made no reply when told of what he was accused. Asked where he had obtained the pistol, he replied: “I couldn’t say that; It may get someone else into trouble.' This witness also described the state of Crawford’s clothing taken oft the ship. They had blood on, them. Crawford’s hands had a lot of dried blood on them. His breath smelt oi liquor. , Crawford, after the Crown case closed, pleaded not guilty to all the charges, and was committed tor trial.