RECKLESS BOYS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 27 March 1922, Page 5

RECKLESS BOYS.

POLICE HELD UP,

BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT MELBOURNE, Mar. 26. ! Two boys, Robert Banks and John Maple, each 16 years of age, escaped from reformatory homes in Castlemaine and Royal Park. At Neerim South, in Gippsland, they broke into a store and stole rifles, ammunition and goods worth £]000, and then appeared before a farmer's house in the same district early in the morning, and fired twelve shots, the farmer's daughter narrowly escaping being shot. The police followed the boys, who took to the bush. During the chase there a constable received a bullet through his hat. The police, black trackers and armed volunteer parties joined in the search. Banks was captured, but Maple escaped in the thick bush, where, although surrounded, he is making a determined stand against forty police and practically every armed man in the district. I

While attempting to rush Maple's position a volunteer searcher was shot and fell from his horse, but was only slightly wounded.