POKENO SENSATION

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 7, 7 December 1936, Page 2

POKENO SENSATION

POLICE FIRE SHOTS. TWO MEN ARRESTED. AUCKLAND, Dec. 5. Elaborate plans by detectives to capture a gang of criminals believed to have been responsible in the last few weeks for geligniting 15 safes in and about Auckland, reached a sensational climax early this morning when four shots were fired by detectives outside the Farmers’ Trading Company’s store at Pokcno, and a suspect was badly wounded. A second man was arrested, and a third leaped a fence and was lost in the darkness. While the wounded man, George Murphy, a Maori, aged 40, of 83 Vincent Street, Auckland, lies in the Auckland Hospital with a 32 calibre bullet through his abdomen, detectives aro searching tho district about Pokeno for the escapee. It is believed that tho escapee was shot either in tho leg or the foot, for as he made off lie was limping. One of tho men concerned, Clement Robert Lawson, aged 25, appeared before Mr Wyvern Wilson, S.M., in tho Police Court to-day on a charge of being a rogue and vagabound unlawfully in possession of housebreaking implements. Ho was remanded for a week, on the application of Chief Detective S. G. Hall. Police efforts to catch a gang suspected of safe-breaking in and about the city in recent weeks had been intensified as safe after safe was blown. Early in tho week one of tho detectives warned the manager of the Farmers’ Trading , Company at Pokeno, Mr R. E. Woodcock, to take a note of the numbers of all banknotes left in the safe overnight until ho saw that an arrest had been made. Three patrol cars were nightly engaged in an unresting search. One of the patrol cars early last night got on the trail of a fivc-seater sedan on the outskirts of the city, and trailed it as it raced southward. The detectives lost sight of the car, but, in tho belief that an attempt might he made on tho premises of the Farmers’ Trading Company at Pokeno, they hurried there and lay in ambush in a hedge opposite the store. They remained in hiding from about 1.30 till 1.45 a.m., when the arrests were made. A CALL TO HALT. Three figures were seen coming down the road. Tho men were seen to go to an oil store, behind tho Farmers’ shop, and then return to the roadway. The voice of a detective called to them to halt, hut they attempted to make off. Two shots were fired into tho air in quick succession by the detectivo in charge of the ambush party. Still the suspects ran. Two more shots rang out, and the detectives, leaping from their cover, closed with two of tho men. The third man jumped a barbed-wire fence and was lost in tho darkness, detectives at tempting to follow.

A hurried search was carried out hut- no trace of the escapee could he found. On tho roadside lay the huddled form of Murphy, shot through tho abdomen. Handcuffs were snapped on to the rubber-gloved hands of the two suspects. When it was realised that Murphy was wounded every effort was made to make liim as comfortable as possible.