CHRISTCHURCH

Oamaru Mail, Volume II, Issue 389, 23 July 1877, Page 2

CHRISTCHURCH

FATAL STABBING CASE. July 23. A fatal stabbing case occurred here on Saturday night, the facts of which, as reported, are as follows : —Henry Powell, formerly in the Christ-church police, and who has lately returned from the Kumara, came to town on Saturdaj r evening. He met a woman named Elizabeth Lynch, who was cohabiting with a German named Karl Kebde. Powell asked the woman to have a drink, and they went together to Barrett's Hotel for that purpose. While there, the woman Lynch told Powell that her husband, meaning Kebde, was playing cards in the backroom of the hotel, and asked Powell to go home with her. Powell did go, but had not been there long when Kebde came in and turned Powell out. Kebde then locked Lynch in and went back to the hotel. About an hour afterwards he returned home and found Lynch and Powell in the bedroom together, the latter having evidently got in at one of the windows. Kebde again turned Powell out. After this, according to one statement, Kebde, being excited, picked up a turner's chisel, ran after Powell and stabbed him in the side ; but according to another version of the affair, Powell, after being turned out, rushed at Kebde, when the latter seized the chisel and stabbed Powell, and the latter then wrenched the chisel from Kebde and ran away. He fainted in the street. He was then taken to the Hospital by a constable, where he died on Sunday evening. At first the wound was not considered dangerous, and no measures were adopted to have Powell's depositions taken until it was too late. Kebde and Lynch were brought up at the Magistrate's Court to-day, and remanded till to-morrow. An inquest will be held this afternoon. The Canterbury Hunt Club had its first bit of genuine sport on Saturday, when a hare was found, and after a smart run was killed. A fall of snow occurred this morning.