ITALIAN RIOT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 6 February 1928, Page 2

ITALIAN RIOT

ATTACKED HOTEL IN VICTORIA LICENSEE STABBED IN THIGH FOUR ARRESTED SYDNEY, 27th Jan. Justf }io\v serious ran be the menace of foreigners wlio do not understand and in some eases make no attempt to understand the laws of the country of their adoption, was amply illustrated hy a sensational incident at Woodend, Victoria, last Sunday night.

For there, in a riot of Italians, knives and daggers were flourished, an hotelkeeper was stabbed, and a policeman received a rough handling before he made four arrests. Italians concerned in the riot were employed by tbe Country Roads Board on road work in the Woodend district. On Sunday night they rolled up in a body to tiie local hotel and demanded admittance to the bar. When they were refused they uttered innumerable threats and retreated for a time. But they returned armed with knives and daggers, and, unable to get the hotelkeeper to open up for them, smashed n door and a window and made their way inside. The licensee was waiting for them and ordered them out again: but they refused his request to go, and when be attempted to put them put thev attacked him.

In a melee with the ringleader of the Italians the licensee, Robert Harper, was stabbed in the thigh. In the meantime other residents in the hotel had called the police, and Constable Earnshaw rushed to the spot, single-handed. His arrival was the signal for another outburst of rioting, apd when Earnshaw attempted to arrest the ringleader of the Italians he was surrounded by the mob. He clung to his man; but he was punched and kicked and his hat was knocked off. Eventually he had to let his man go. Earnshaw went away and obtained a revolver and a baton and returned to the fray. He re-arrested the ringleader, took a knife from him at the point of I lie revolver, and took the prisoner outside the lighting zone. By that time the licensee's friends were battling with (lie intruders, too. Having locked up his prisoner, Earnshaw returned and. with the help of a number of townspeople who had rolled up by that time, arrested three other- Italians. Numerous knives and daggers were taken from the rioters, one being loin long.