KILLED AT PLAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20465, 17 January 1930, Page 11

KILLED AT PLAY.

PETROL HOLDER EXPLODES. INQUEST ON BOY VICTIMS. LONDON. Jan. 6. At the inquest held before the Islington coroner, Sir Walter Schroder, concerning the deaths of the three children who were killed at Hollovvay Road railway station when a petrol container exploded, Mrs. Beatrice Telford, mother of Mark Telford, one of tho victims, gave evidence. Mrs. Telford said: "I told him not to get into mischief. I was getting the dinner ready, after he went out,. when suddenly I heard a bang."

Mrs. Telford recounted how she rushed into the street, ran through the crowd and saw her son lying on the road. Then she collapsed. She learned, when she recovered, that the boy was dead.

A hospital doctor gave evidence that the lad's injuries were such that he must have immediately become unconscious. Mrs. Paxton, whose son, William, aged nine, was killed, gave similar evidence regarding the bang. When she rushed out, she said, she saw her husband with her son's dead body in his arms.

Christopher Smart, father of the third victim, said: "I looked through a crack in the door of the yard, where the explosion occurred, and Yecognised my boy by his boots and stockings. Ho was lying on the ground, with his face covered by a sack. X lifted it and found that he was dead. I had often played in that yard when I was a boy. The gates are always open." Other evidence demonstrated the force of the explosion, which blew the lid of the petrol container into an S shape. A sixfoot fence, topped with barbed wire, surrounded the yard, but the gates generally were open.

Willie Davis, a brother of one of the injured lads, who had found a box of matches, unscrewed the bung of a barrel and inserted a lighted paper. The explosion occurred immediately. Tommy <Saunders detailed how he became frightened when his playmates began skylarking with the barrels and ran home. He heard the explosion while he was running away. , The inquiry was adjourned.

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