THIEF KILLED ON SHIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19957, 28 May 1928, Page 11

THIEF KILLED ON SHIP.

SHOT DEAD BY CAPTAIN. ACT HELD TO BE JUSTIFIED. An unusual experience recently befell Captain W. J. Enright, master of the steamer Fort Curtis, which has been visiting Auckland this week and which left this port on Saturday for Napier. At New York on April 18 he was arrested on a technical charge of manslaughter, but was shortly afterwards released. The story was told by the New York correspondent of the London Daily Express. The Port Curtis was in Brooklyn Dock when Captain Enright was awakened at three o'clock in the morning by a slight noise in his cabin. Seeing the shadowy figure of a man, he pulled a revolver from beneath his pillow and called on the intruder to put up his hands. Instead of obeying the man sprang for the door, wrenched it open, and rushed down tho deck. Captain Enright fired three shots. The man staggered, thrust a hand into his pocket, made a feeble effort to throw something overboard, and then collapsed. He was dead when Captain Enright reached him, and near by on the deck lay the captain's cuff-links and shirt studs. The crew came running from the forecastle, and found their chief bending over the body of the thief. Someone blew a police whistle, and the harbour detective squad responded. Nobody in the ship had even seen the dead man before. He was about 30 years old and apparently was a Spaniard. Detectives found in his pocket the lyric of a song, '*My Blue Heaven," scrawled on a piece of dirty paper. Another scrap of foolscap bore a brief oration in Spanish of the kind that a schoolboy might recite on speech day. Captain Enright, after being arrested, was questioned by Assistant-District Attorney William Kleinman. His story convinced Mr. Kleinman that the shooting constituted justifiable homicide and he was accordingly released.