BOMB OUTRAGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21935, 19 October 1934, Page 8

BOMB OUTRAGE

YOUNG WOMAN KILLED l ' CHILD SERIOUSLY INJURED COTTAGE BLOWN TO PIECES While a young woman and her baby boy were asleep in their two-roomed riron cottage, two miles from Ingham, Queensland, in the early hours of the morning of Monday, October 8. a bomb blew the cottage to pieces, killed the woman outright, and hurled the mutilated baby to the wrecked roof, where it remained until rescued some time later. The victjms were: —Mrs. Giueseppina [(known as Pina) Bacohiella, aged 23 years, killed; Aklo Bacchiella, aged 4 years and 10 months, who sustained a broken arm, portion of the elbow blown away, and internal injuries. His condition was at first critical, but it later showed an improvement. Hoik's were entertained that he will live. Jealousy is believed to have been the motive for tho outrage. Mrs. Bacchiella was the wife of an Italian cane cutter; who left his cottage tin Sunday afternoon to return to his gang at Victoria Estate, five miles distant. The man, his wife, and baby had had a happy week-end together in their cottage home, and the mother and child retired early on Sunday night. The noise of the explosion was so loud that it awakened most of the inhabitants of the township of Ingham, and when a message was received locating the scene of the explosion,' police and ambulance men, accompanied by Dr. Leckie, hurried in cars to a tragic scent. Cries of the Child The bomb apparently had been placed beside the wall of the cottage near the bed containing the sleeping woman and child. This wall was completely shattered. Tangled sheets of iron were scattered in all directions. Inside, the bed and other articles of furniture were wrecked, and some of them had caught fire and were blazing. The body of the woman was found in this room. Although badly bruised, the body was recognisable. , . . Somewhere a child was crying pitifully. "Where are you?" called the searchers. "Here," came a plaintive reply; After a frantic search the child eventually was located on the roof. He had been hurled through a gap in the wrecked roof, and rolled to the roof of a skillion room adjoining that in which the explosion occurred. Here be remained, badlj' mutilated, and suffering intense agony, until rescued. This was considered to be the most feasible theory of his presence on this roof. Another theory advanced was that the child had been deliberately placed on the roof by the perpetrator of the crime, or an accomplice, so that its life might be spared when the bomb exploded near its mother's bed. The roof is sis feet from the ground. Placing of the Gelignite The gelignite had been placed between a stud of the wall and a sheet of corrugated iron, and in direct line with the head of the woman's bed. The cottage was near a creek, which winds from Ingham to join the Herbert River, some distance further along, and this, it is suggested, may have afforded the perpetrator of the outrage with a means of escape without being noticed on the roads. A pathetic ■> scene occurred when the husband and father, Giuseppe Bacchiella, arrived some hours after the tragedy, and saw the body of his wife ready to be taken to the morgue. He sobbed bitterly, and then fainted. The. post-mortem examination revealed that the woman had died from heart failure, caused by the shock of the explosion. The outrage was definitely considered to be not the work of "the black hand"—nor of any Italian organisation .