CONSTABLE WOUNDED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20900, 16 June 1931, Page 9

CONSTABLE WOUNDED.

SHOT TWICE IN THE BODY. FINEST TRADITIONS UPHELD. At the Police Court at Newcastle, New South Wales, recently, Thomas Aubrey Towers, aged 21, clerk, James Norman Miller, aged 20, labourer, and William Malcolm Christian, aged 24, labourer, were committed for trial on charges of having, at Lambton, maliciously wounded Constable E. E. Mabbutt, with intent to murder.

Constable iHabbut, who, using a stick, limped as he walked to the witness-box, said that at 9.15 p.m. on April 2 he was travelling by motor-cycle at Lambton, and saw a motor-car with the same number as that on a car just reported stolen. He chased the car through the streets of Lambton at a speed of between 55 and 40 miles an hour. Then, during a sudden turn, the car stopped. Two men jumped out and ran away, and a third followed them at. an interval of a couple of seconds, lie chased the third man, who suddenly faced him and fired three shots in succession from a weapon concealed in his coat pocket. He fired through the pocket. "The first shot struck me in the groin," the constable added. "I hesitated. A second shot was fired, without effect. The third shot hit tne in the chest. At the moment I had my hand on the man's shoulder. He stepped aside, and I fell to the ground. I called out 'Stop,' then I collapsed. When I came to 1 struggled to my feet, and was mounting my motorcycle when I collapsed again."

The Government medical officer at Newcastle, Dr. James Leslie, said that he had taken a bullet from near the lower part of the constable's spine during an opera tion at. the Newcastle Hospital, lie had not extracted another bullet, because lie thought that to* take it out would do more damage than to leave it there. A police sergeant said that Towers and Miller had made certain statements to a Sydney detective. They told him they intended to fight tho attempted murder charge. They were sorry for the constable. They had only wanted to escape. There wAs no intent to murder. The magistrate congratulated Constable .Mabbutt on the pluck he had shown before and after the shooting, and said he had well upheld the finest traditions of the police force.