SERIOUS CHARGE

New Zealand Times, Volume LI, Issue 11910, 18 August 1924, Page 8

SERIOUS CHARGE

ALLEGED ATTEMPTED MURDER.' A PIG SHOOTING EXCURSION. ! Further particulars in respect to the charge against John Edward Jefiries of attempting to murder his wife 1 , are as follow: — t Accused is thiry-one years of age and wiry-looking in build. He is an outdoor worker, having been engaged in carting shingle. With elbows resting on the top of the dock, he appeared! in the Magistrate’s Court, Rangiora, quite composed as he listened to the charge. Sergeant Cassidy asked for a remand! till next Friday. Mr E. D. R. Smith, who appeared for accused, said it was hardly a case in which he could ask for bail.

Sergeant Cassidy said that he would object to bail, - as it ; was a most serious charge. Mr C. I. Jennings, J.P.: You- are satisfied that it . is a case in* which hail should not he allowed? Sergeant Cassidy ': Yes. Accused was therefore remanded in custody. ' ' ' ■ MIRACULOUS ESCAPE FROM DEATH. Jeffreys was arrested on Thursday night last by Detective Bickerdike and Sergeant Cassidy, but the happenings upon which the case for the police is based date back nearly three weeks—to Sunday July 27th. Accompanied by his wife, two children, one a girl aged about eight years, the eldest of the family of four, and the other, the youngest a boy aged three, and two Maons,>Jeffries went by car on a pighunting "expedition to a spot known as Oraki, in the vicinity of Glentui. The place is a lonely one amongst the hills, although it is occassionally visited by picnic parties. During the outing Mrs Jeffreys'was injured By "a fall down a

steep cliff overlooking a.gully in which there is a small stream, and the presecution alleges that Bhe was pushed over. She fell right to the bottom into the gully, and had a miraculous escape from death.

At the time the Maoris were some distance away, and when they returned Jeffreys told them that his wife had fallen over the cliff. They all went down into the guliy, and found the woman in a badly bruised condition. They managed to get her to the car, and she was taken homo Buffering from various injuries and shock. The next day a neighbour named Mrs Rutherford heard of Mrs Jeffrey’s injuries,; and sent for Dr Allan, who found that in addition to bruises from head to foot, Mrs Jeffreys had a bone broken in one of her elbows. ) A LONELY SPOT.

Detectives visited the Beene to secure photographs. It is a picturesque locality, but a yonely spot—twenty miles from Rangiora by the Longburn-Oxford road and thence by the Sawmill road, an unmetalled track which branches off the main road about a quarter of a mile from the Glentui cutting. The gully which the Jeffrey’s family,visited is only a short distance off Sawmill road, hut a long way from any house. The part of the cliff at which Jeffreys is alleged to have made the attempt reveals a sheer drop of seventy feet to the bottom. Most of the side of the cliff is covered with vegetation, but here there is a clear break three feet in width, and a person standing at the top looks almost directly on to the boulders belowv This part of the gully, it is stated, was hidden from the view of the other members of the party by a slight bend, and Mr and-Mrs Jeffreys were accompanied then only by the youngest child, aged three. Another remand may he nece*ary this week. Mrs Jeffreys, who is \tilt suffering from the effects of the fall, is being attended., to at her home at Southbrook. ’ V