ACCIDENTAL DEATH

New Zealand Times, Volume LI, Issue 11960, 15 October 1924, Page 7

ACCIDENTAL DEATH

INQUEST ON BOY SMITH. RAN IN, FRONT OF MOTOR-CaY An inquest on the body of Graham Charles Smith was held m the Magistrate’s Court yesterday before Mr W. G. Riddell Coroner. Dr. Bull,: of the Wellington Hospital, stated that the deceased, who was about four years of age, had been rdmitted to the hospital at 6 p.m. on Friday in an unconscious condition. He died on Sunday evening through his haiing fractured his skull. Raymond Sydney Smith, a plumber’s apprentice residing at Karoori, said he saw the deceased croes the road. He wa9 standing on the kerb next to a lorry, and began to run over the road when a motor-car came along. _ It would have been impossible for either the driver of the car to see the boy or the boy to see the motor-oar. The deceased hesitated for a second and then ran. The driver applied his brakes, but before the car stopped he had struck the boy. Charles Edward Fawthorpe, a plumber of Wadestown, said that on Friday afternoon at about 4.45 p.m. he was driving his motor-car down the Main Karori road at somewhere between 10 and 12 miles per hour on the correct side, and while passing a lorry swerved out. Then ho saw two boys come out from behind the lorry. He sounded his horn. One of the boys stopped l . The other hesitated, and ran forward in front, of the car. -He was applying his brakes, hut could not stop his car before the boy was knocked down. He must have been thriving at about six miles an hour then. ' He had a certificate for motor driving, and was quite sober at the time of the accident, A verdict of accidental death was returned.