JILTED GIRL

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4326, 10 August 1937, Page 7

JILTED GIRL

STORY AT INQUEST Appearing at an inquest with her toot bandaged, and walking with the aid of sticks, a girl denied the suggestion that in an attempt to injure a man who jilted her she brought about the death of another man whom she did not know.

She was found injured beside a motor cycle which had crashed, and it was alleged she tried to throw herself in the path of her former lover as he motor cycled home. An inquest, held at Great Sallkeld, Cumberland, was on the rider of the motor cycle, Ernest Redvers Graham, aged 36, farmer’s son, of Chambers Common, Penrith.

“ HAVE I KILLED HIM ” The girl now called as a witness, Miss Mabel Robinson, aged 22, of Great Salkeld, was a stranger to him. Witnesses declared that after she recovered consciousness Miss Robinson said, “Where is Hughie? Tell him 1 am sorry for what 1 have done.” Police-constable Ferguson stated Miss Robinson repeatedly called “ Where is Hughie? Have 1 killed him ” He asked who Hughie was, and she replied “ Hughie Reeves.” On the way to the Penrith Hospital Miss Robinson remarked: “I was standing in a gateway, and ran out in front of him. I love Hughie. I should not have done it. I am a bad lass. He is rotten to the core. He left me 13 weeks ago. He has got another girl in Penrith. I will not let myself get better. “ 1 was not on the back of the motor bike. I told him before I would run out in front of him.” The constable added that he asked Miss Robinson how she knew it was Reeves, and she replied: “ I knew the sound of his cycle.” Hugh Cecil Reeves, of Chapel House, Great Salkeld, gave evidence that he had been in Miss Robinson’s company on a few occasions, but not since August. He was now friendly with another girl at Penrith, whom he visited on Sunday nights. THREW HERSELF ON BACK.

One Sunday night in December he was motor cycling home from Penrith, and coming round a bend when Miss Robinson ran out in front of his machine. He had to swerve to avoid her.

Coroner: Do you mean that she ran right in your path? Reeves: Yes. If 1 had not swerved I would have hit her. Reeves declared that on the following Sunday Miss Robinson ran out exactly in the same way at the same place. On the Sunday after Christmas she threw herself on her back across the road in front of his motor cycle, and he had to pull up. “ I told her that if she did not stop it I would have to report her,” said Reeves. “ 1 asked her who would be responsible if 1 ran over her, and she said she wanted to be run over.”

Giving evidence on her own wish Miss Robinson stated she could not remember the things she was supposed to have sard after the accident. She stopped going out with Reeves in September.

“1 knew I was only wasting my time, and was not jealous,” she added. “ It was not true that I had been waiting on the road two or three Sunday nights. On the night of the accident 1 went to church with a friend, and later sent my friend home.

SAID STORY WAS INVENTED. “ 1 then decided to meet my brother on the road. When 1 thought he was not coming 1 began to walk home. I heard a motor cycle coming. 1 was walking close to the gutter. I felt a jerk on my back, and then 1 have a faint recollection of someone stopping with a car. “ Reeves tells nothing but lies,” Miss Robinson added. “He has invented this story deliberately. He would invent it because he was tired of me.” The Coroner remarked that it seemed obvious that the girl had mistaken Graham for Reeves, but it was questionable whether the statements siie made showed any intention either to kill Reeves or to do him harm.

“ The whole story,” he continued, “ seems to me to be a story of a jilted girl who wanted to stop her lover so that lie spoke to her.” On the coroner’s advice the jury returned a verdict that Graham was killed through a collision with a pedestrian, but there was not sufficient evidence to show how the collision was caused.