TRAIN DRIVER GURR APPEARS IN COURT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22663, 14 June 1948, Page 6

TRAIN DRIVER GURR APPEARS IN COURT

(P.A.) BLENHEIM, June 12. The preliminary hearing of evidence before justices of the peace began in the Police Court of charges of manslaughter against Joseph William Gurr, driver of the south-bound express which crashed near Scddon on February 25. Gurr faces Hvo charges of manslaughter, the first in connection with the death of Gwendoline Rose Cresswell and the second relative to the deaths of Kathleen Margaret Flyger, Ettie Irene Shields, Rose Alma Shields, Stephen Henry James Warraan, and Ronald Spencer Hawkins. Erl Lortie, a former Railways Department platelayer who was a passenger on the train, said that soon after the train left Seddon he made a complaint that it was travelling too fast to make curves. “Then I felt a jolt and saw a cloud of dust. All I felt at the back of the train was two or three short jolts and I then reached out and pulled the air brake.” Later, witness said there was another railway man in the carriage and he went to pull the emergency brake but witness beat him to it. Witness, who said he had had experience in several countries as an enginedriver, stated that none of the express trains on which he was a passenger had travelled at anything like the speed of this train. This evidence was taken because witness intends shortly to leave for America. Further evidence will be given, probably by 30 witnesses, in Blenheim starting on June 28.