TRAGIC WEEK-END.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20906, 21 December 1929, Page 26

TRAGIC WEEK-END.

SYDNEY'S GRIM RECORD,

11 VIOLENT DEATHS,

(From Odb Own Cobbesi’osdest.) SYDNEY, December 32. i The last week-end in Sydney was one of the grimmest in the history of the city. Eleven people met violent deaths within the metropolitan area, and the City Morgue on Sunday night was a place of horror, filled with the victims. Death in many starkly tragic forms swept from the sky, the sea, the eahh. and from smoking pistol barrels, and a knife. Two men were ferociously murdered in the infamous Sur-y Hills district. Two children were drowned in waterboles. In a plane crash at Mascot a woman was terribly injured, and she died later. A fisherman was swept into the sea and taken by a huge shark. A steward disapj eared as a boat was entering the Sydney Heads, and a motorist was killed in the city , when a motor car struck a pile. And there were others. Two charges of murder have arisen from this grim record. One concerned the death of Arthur Lange, who was disembowelled with a knife, and the other the death of Alexander Bedford. Bedford is supposed to have quarrelled with another man over a woman. The other man pushed him down, the fall killed him. Lange was iu a dreadful state when discovered by the police in a home at Surry Hills, and he had no. hope of recovery from the start. An arrest has been made in each case.

“ Mystery surrounds the disappearance of the steward, Terrance John Lewis, of Balmain. • Lewis was ’.ast seen alive at 8 o’clock on Saturday night. He was then in good spirits, according to other members of the crew of the Akaroon. But when he was reported missing no trace of him could be found.

Although everything was done to save her life, Mrs Irene Marie. Bumie, known in musical circles as Miss Irene de Luca, who was injured in a plane crash in the city, died the following The tragic feature about this fatg”ty was that her husband, who is a city business man, did not know that his wife had been injured until a friend pointed out to him the news in the Sunday papers. “I had m idea she was up in the plane,” said her husband. “I have frequently pleaded with her not to go up in aeroplanes.. I have never been in a plane myself.” The couple had been estranged for some time, and it was reported that a reconciliation had been reached on the day the accident oi »urred.

The Ijst of tragedies included four cases of drowning. A girl of 10, paddling iu the waterhole at the rear of her home, got out of her depth and cried for help. Her mother heroically plunged in after her, hut it was too late. The yhild had disappeared. The distracted mother was herself on the point of sinking when a youth heard her cries and went to her rescue. On Saturday afternoon a small boy was paddling a\canoi in the harbour He said to his-companion that he would have a djve. He dived, and. he was not seen again. His body was recovered the following day in 30 feet of water.