KOITERANGI DEER CULLER’S DEATH: INQUEST OPENED

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 April 1948, Page 3

KOITERANGI DEER CULLER’S DEATH: INQUEST OPENED

The events preceding the fatal accident to a Koiterangi deer- culler, David Alfred Lyes, single, aged 22, were related when an inquest, was opened and adjourned sine die at Timaru on Saturday.' Lyes fell between 500 and 600 feet down a cliff face near the Hermitage, Mount Cook, on Thursday, and the Coroner commented that it seemed to be a clear case of a fracture of the skull. Evidence of identification was given by. Ed ward Alfred Rye, a field officer of‘the Department of Internal Affairs, who said that he was with a party of deer cullers camped at Glentanner Station, Mount Cook. The party went to the Hoophorn creek area, about eight miles east of the Hermitage, on Thursday, to shoot thar. Lyes, accompanied by Mr R. Forrester, was instructed to shoot on a dividing area west of the Hoophorn as far uo as the Hoophorn Glacier, and from the glacier they were to work down to the Hoophorn creek. Rye said he last saw Lyes on the saddle of a dividing ridge at 9.0 U a m but he heard him shooting ai 12.30 p.m. When Lyes did not return to camp by 10 p.m., a search party was organised, and when a search Was made at the foot of the glacier the body of .Lyes was seen, by binoculars, lying at the bottom of <- rock bluff. Lyes’s rifle when recovered had five rounds m the magazine and a live cartridge in the breech.