WAS BOY ELECTROCUTED?

Hawera Star, Volume L, 27 October 1930, Page 2

WAS BOY ELECTROCUTED?

EVIDENCE. AT INQUEST. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, Oct. 25. An inquest in regard to the death of Thomas’ David Allanon was held at Lower Hutt to-day. Allanon is the boy who was reported to. have been electrocuted on September 2/, but the manner of his death apparently is in dispute. • , Giving evidence Dr, Dudley said that on the left hand were undoubted burns, such as would be caused by a live wire, and on the right hand were smears ot what was apparently an insulation material. All the marks were consistent with, death bv electrocution. Mrs. Judd who walked over the railway ramp just .before the accident, said .slje saw a boy running along the side of the ramp put out his right- hand and touch, an insulated wire. Witness saw a flash, from the wire a little further along from where it was touched. The bov screamed and fell backwards. She told, a man 'passing about it and within a few minutes he lrad taken the bov away in a car. The wire the bov touched was a sloping wire from the post to which it was attached, about foot above the ground, to a higher ipost.

Thelma. Philips, who was with Mrs. Judd, said the boy .appeared to be between two wires with his hand l on each. Witness said she saw a flame run down fcne wire in the boy’s right hand. Charles Bently, the man who took the boy to the doctor, said that one wire was insulated and the other was not. Ernest Delaney, of the Hutt \ alley Power Board, who removed 1 the wires immediately after the accident, said the insulated wire was bare at the top and was attached to a cross-arm of the vole between two feeder wires carrying 11,000 volte. The cross-arm below carried 6000 volts on one side and telephone wires on the other. A third cross-arm, lower still, carried low ten-si-oil power and lighting; wires. The naked end of the .stay wire was a Dent TO inches from the nearest 11,000 volt live wire. _ \ The inquest was adjourned for a week bo that the. doctor could be recalled and possibly other witnesses examined, there being a. suggynion of the. bov having possibly struck a e*j’vertin falling and fractured I.»s skull.