SERIOUS CHARGE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 43, 18 January 1935, Page 2

SERIOUS CHARGE.

ALLEGATION OF MANSLAUGHTER Per Press Association. HASTINGS, Jan. 17. The preliminary hearing of the manslaughter charge against Maurice James Brooker, aged 20, who is accused of fatally striking a youth, William George Farquharson while Farquharson was in the company of a girl, Nola Russell Perrin, to whom Brooker had been engaged till a little while previously, was begun at Hastings this morning, Mr J. G. L. Hewitt, S.M., being on the Bench. Mr Cecil Duff represented accused. Nola Perrin, aged 18, a shop assistant, gave evidence that she and deceased were employed in the same shop. About 10.20 o’clock on Christmas Eve she finished work. Deceased accompanied her home and carried her parcels. They went through Cornwall Park and arrived at the gate of her home an hour after leaving the shop. They had lieen standing at the gate for ten minutes when accused arrived. Deceased was then holding witness’s parcels. Brooker struck him under the chin, causing him to fall on to the concrete footpath. Accused said: “I told you that’s what I’d do with anyone who went with you.” Deceased, who had a wound at the hack of his head, was carried unconscious by accused and witness’s parents into her home. Deceased had no opportunity of defending himself. Earlier in the evening, witness added, accused came , into the shop and spoke to witness, who thought he was then quite drunk. She had been keeping company with accused for about two years. Three weeks before Christmas witness broke off their engagement and she returned the engagement ring. A few days before the fatality Brooker had made threats that he would “clean up” anyone who paid her attentions. Accused and Farquharson were friendly, though not intimately so. The night of the fatality was the first time deceased had accompanied her home after the shop had closed. John Edmund Perrin, father of the previous witness, stated that accused appeared to be drunk when he saw him. Deceased recovered consciousness after about half an hour’s treatment at witness’s house. He was then taken home in a friend’s car. Evidence taken in the afternoon set out to show that accused had drunk a considerable amount of liquor in company with friends Deceased’s brother described how he was awakened by deceased taking ill during the night. Deceased got up, stumbled, and fell on his bed. His parents were then called and a doctor summoned. Medical evidence by two doctors was to the effect that the actual blow on the chin did not cause Farquharson’s death. Constable Dunn stated that accused told him he did not know whom he had struck till he saw deceased in Perrin’s house. Constable Craigie said accused told him he was lying on the grass on the other side of the road from Perrin’s house waiting to see who brought the girl home, as he intended to “clean him up.” The defence called no evidence. Accused was committed for trial at the Supreme Court at Napier.