POLICE HELD AT BAY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21102, 12 August 1930, Page 7

POLICE HELD AT BAY.

TWO MEN SHOT IN A VILLAGE. MURDER CHARGE AGAINST OLD MAN. ■ ' An extraordinary scene in the village of XJley, near Dureley, Gloucestershire, when an old man with a double-barrelled gun defied 400 villagers for over an hour, while a dead man’s body lay at his feet, had a sequel at Dureley Police Court, when John Dolbear (70) was remanded for a week, accused of murdering William Henry Hill (47). a foreman mechanic and smallholder. Hill was shot dead, and his companion, Charles Pitcher, waa wounded, . When the police asked, for an immediate remand, . Dolbear exclaimed: “Do you want me to eay what I did it for? *’ * No, don’t eay anything now,” replied the magistrate. The tragedy was first seen by Mra Hill, wife of the shot >man. Her husband and Pitcher had just left the house to do some fencing, when she healed three quick shots. Hill clutched his face and collapsed, 1 while Pitcher staggered into the ditch with a grban. It was more than an hour beforg the police, by a ruse, yete able to recover Hill’s body. When they arrived they found themselves threatened by the old man with the gun. The police eventually retired .to the back of a cottage, bn the knoll and the crowd kept shouting to the man with the gun while the officers Crept foot by foot up the garden where he stood. Two of them suddenly made a spring, threw the man down, and wrenched away his gun. As he was baing taken Away by the police the crowd cried "Kill him! ” and “Lynch him! ” and began to thrown stones. The police had to dose iu to protect him from violence.