Auckland Sensation

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVI, Issue 11, 24 December 1925, Page 6

Auckland Sensation

BOMB IN BUILDING EXPLODES ON STAIRWAY. Auckland, Dec. 23. A sensational discovery was made bv an employee of the legal firm o! Ilesketh, Richmond and Clayton, in the Bank of Australasia building at the corner of Queen street and Wyndham street, this morning. When he went to work at 9 a.m. in an upstairs corridor he saw something flight in a small casket, containing * hat looked like a parcel. Lifting the burning parcel out, he put it on the lead-covered stairs and tried to pul the flames out with his handkerchief. Then he ran into a neighbouring lavatory to get some water and in the brief interval he heard an explosion outside like a shot out of a gun. When the clerk got back to the corridor there was a smell of gunpowder and a lot of grey smoke about. The bomb was in a fair-sized tin with a piece of fuse attached to it. Scattered about were the contents of the tin—nails, bolts, screws and some road metal.

It was a rather amateurish sort ot bomb, but a bomb it was. and had anyone been in the corridor at the Lime he would have got a nasty smack from some of the flying missiles. No one has the slightest idea as to how the home-made bomb got into the corridor or what it was intended to