TIMARU ASSAULT

Northern Advocate, 8 April 1931, Page 5

TIMARU ASSAULT

CAPITAL CHARGE TWO MEN IN DOCK. INQUEST CONCLUDED. (Pet Pres* Asiociation. —Copyright.) TIMARU, Tuesday, t Following an inquest this morning touching the death of Robert Galvin Rahilly Niebett, aged 26, who died in the Tirnaru Publie Hospital at 4 a.m. yesterday, as the result of an alleged assault with robbery in a motor car, in Conoor Road on Saturday afternoon, John Henry Fitzgerald and James Cox were charged with murder, and remanded to appear at the Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday, April 15, Evidence was. given at the inquest, which was taken before a J.P. and a jury of. six, to the effect that the deceased had been seen, struggling with another man in a car coming downhill in Conoor Road. According to the depositions of two boys, aged 12 and 11 respectively, the deceased was seen endeavouring to' get out of the car, which was travelling at a fast speed. Fitzgerald, it is alleged, was holding him from behind. He apparently fell, and the wheel of the car passed over hie left thigh, which Dr. R. D. King stated was reduced to pulp. When Constable W. Devine arrived on the scene there was no sign of Fitzgerald or Cox, whose ear was subsequently found further down the road, but round a corner. Fitzgerald made a bid to escape, and was arrested after a grim struggle. In his dying depositions, taken on Sunday evening at the public hospital, Nisbett stated that he was struck twice on the jaw by Fitzgerald, but today Doctors King and McKenzie said they did not notice cuts or bruises on the deceased’s face. They admitted to Inspector A. S. Bird, who handled the case for the police, that they had not looked for signs of assault. The jury at the inquest, after a short retirement, returned a verdici that deceased died from loss of blood and shock caused by a car,accident in Conoor Road.