DOMINION ITEMS

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 January 1944, Page 2

DOMINION ITEMS

MAORI CHILDREN DROWNED TAURANGA, January 17. A Maori girl, Kaiarero Karehana, aged 9, and a Maori boy, Rupeke Tuanui, aged 7, were drowned in the Bowentown Estuary, Tauranga Harbour, on Sunday afternoon. When the children were missing, a search was instituted and the bodies were found in shallow water.

FATALLY SHOT

AUCKLAND, January 18.

A fatal gunshot wound was received by Miss Esther Rose Sutton, aged 25, of Papatoetoe. Miss Sutton was, apparently, cleaning the barrel of a .22 rifle when it discharged, the bullet penetrating the centre of her forehead. Cleaning materials were beside her when she was found. She was taken to the hospital, and died an hour later.

FISHERMAN MISSING THAMES, January 18. Fears are felt for the safety of an Auckland camper at Mercury Bay, Leslie Victor Barnett, aged thirty-six a resident of IVlnngere, Auckland; also of Stan Maurice, aged eight, who went fishing off the bay yesterday. They were last seen at four p.m. ten miles off land. Since then there has been no trace of them. A search party has been organised, assisted by many launches and aeroplanes. It is feared the boat had been blown out to sea, where it may have capsized.

SOLDIERS SENTENCED WELLINGTON, January 17. The following is the result of proceedings before the General Courtmartial which assembled last week at a military camp near Wellington:— Pte. Ira Lewis was found guilty of, when on active service, deserting His Majesty’s service in that he absented himself without leave from the 21st Battalion while in the field in Tunisia on March 24 last till arrested in Australia on July 7. He was also found guilty of a further charge of desertion in absenting himself, without leave from a transport on its arrival in New Zealand early in August last year till he surrendered himself on December 22 wearing civilian clothes. The sentence of the court-martial was one of four years’ penal servitude, which has been mitigated by the confirming authority to three years’ penal servitude.

Found guilty of desertion in New Zealand from March 7, .1942, till December 30. 1943, Pte. John Wilson Bagley was sentenced to be imprisoned with hard labour for 18 months. This sentence has been confirmed.

SCRUB FIRE

AUCKLAND, January 18.

Residents of 21 houses in O’Rorke Road and Church Street, Penrose, vacated their homes this afternoon, and in one residence an aged invalid had to be evacuated, as a fierce scrub fire swept over about 40 acres of adjoining land and endangered the houses. Through the efforts of about 200 men and women, including the staffs of the four' metropolitan fire stations, damage was confined to a private garage and some fowlhouses, and the destruction of ducks and hens. The fire started in a large expanse of gorse and grass. A strong wind was blowing, and soon tongues of flame were shooting high through a heavy volume of smoke and spreading rapidly.

Many women occupants of houses in O’Rorke Road connected their garden hoses to taps and filled wash tubs to combat the danger. When the firemen arrived the flames were sweeping eastward to that locality along a broad front, and at the height of the conflagration flames roared through chimps of 9 feet high gorse and shorter fern and grass over a distance of several hundred .yards. The fire was checked as it encroached on the gardens and lawns of some of the residences.