FATAL BLOW STRUCK

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 18 January 1935, Page 9

FATAL BLOW STRUCK

CHARGE OF MANSLAUGHTER QUARREL OVER A GIRL YOUTH TO FACE TRIAL. HASTINGS, Jan. 17. The preliminary hearing of a manslaughter charge against Maurice •James Brooker, aged 2U, who is accused of fatally striking a youth named William George Farquaharson while Farquaharson was in tin- company of a girl, Xohi Russel Perrin, to whom Brooker had been engaged till a little while previously, was held at Hastings to-day. Mr. J. G. L. Hewitt. S.M., was' on the bench. Mr. Cecil Duff represented accused, who was committed to the Supreme Court tor trial.

Xula Peri in, aged IS, shop assistant, gave evidence that she and Farquaharson wore employed in the same shop. About 10.2 J on Christmas Eve she finished her work. Farquaharson accompanied her homo and carried her paicols. They went through Cornwall Park and arrived at the gate of her home an hour after leaving the shop. They had been standing at the gate ten* minutes when Brooker arrived. Farquaharson was then holding the parcels. Brooker struck him under the chin, causing him to tall on to the conciote footpath. Brooker said, “I told you that's what I’d do with anyone who went out with you.”

Farquaharson, who had a wound at the hack of his bead, was carried unconscious by Brooker and her parents into her home. Farquaharson had no opportunity of detending hiniselt. Earlier in the evening Brooker came into the shop and spoke to witness, who thought he was then quite drunk. She had been keeping company with Brookcr about two years.

Three weeks before Christmas witness broke off their engagement. She returned the ring a few days before the fatality. Brooker had made threats that “He'd clean up anyone who paid her attentions.”

Brooker and Farquaharson were friendly, though not intimately so. The night of the fatality was the first time that Farquaharson hail accompanied her home after the shop had John Edmund Perrin, father of Nola Perrin, stated that Brooker appeared to he drunk when he saw him. Farquaharson recovered consciousness after about half-an-hour's treatment at witness’ house. He was then taken home in a friend’s ear. Evidence taken in the afternoon set out to show that Brooker had drunk a considerable amount of liquor in company with friends. Farquaharson’s brother described how he was awakened by his brother being ill during the night. Deceased got up. stumbled and fell on his bed. His parents were called and they summoned a doctor. Evidence by two doctors was to the effect that the actual blow on the chin did nor cause Farquaharson's death. Constable Dunn said Brooker had told him he did not know whom lie had struck until lie saw Faiquaharson in Perrin’s house.

Constable Craigie said Brooker told him lie was lying on the grass on the other side of the road from Perrin’s house waiting to see who brought tlie girl home as he intended to “clean him up.” The defence called no evidence.