FOUGHT THIEF IN DARK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23692, 27 December 1938, Page 5

FOUGHT THIEF IN DARK

THEN SAT ON HIM MOTHER'S SHOUT TO SON || '-ACTION JUSTIFIED " (Ftkrtvi Our Own Correspondent) \ 'By Air Mail) LONDON, Dec. 1. A, 70-year-old woman, who had described a struggle after she and her son had returned home to find an intruder in the house, was complimented on her courage at an inquest at Birmingham. The inquest was on William George Hart, aged 36, a motor mechanic, of Efflinch Lane, Barton-•under-Needwood, near Burton-on-Trent, who died in hospital from tetanus after he had been charged with housebreaking. The' jury returned a verdict of justifiable homicide.

The woman was Mrs Harriet Amelia Winmill. of Station House, Croxall. Her son said that he warned Hart when he was striking out with a poker that he would shoot. "He did not stop," said the son,

'so I pulled the hammer back and pressed the trigger, holding the sun low to hit his legs if possible. It was the one way of stopping him."

Mrs Winmill stated that she saw her son being struck with a poker and she shouted, ''Shoot, Jack, or he'll do us both in." She went to her son's help and between them they pushed Hart down on the landing. The coroner, Dr W. H. Davison, said of Mrs Winmill: "She is an old lady of 70, but it was a test many of us would not like to be put to." TAMWORTH CHARGE

He added that the law on the matter was quite clear. If anyone was feloniously breaking and entering and was killed, the action of the slaver was justified. Hart died on Thursday in Dudley road Hospital. Birmingham, where he was taken after being wheeled into court in a bathchair at Tamworth and charged with housebreaking and stealing £ll 10s. the property of Mrs Winmill. Miss Grace Joan Hart, a sister, said that her brother was "very deaf." .About eight or ten weeks before his death he " walked out on his brothers, with whom he was associated in a garage business, and had since been unemployed." No relative visited him in the prison hospital because they were disgusted with what he had done. Also they were told that he was not very bad and did not wish to see them Otherwise they would have gone.

Dr K. P. Parsons, of Dudley Road Hospital, Birmingham, said that he considered the tetanus bacilli undoubtedly came from the dirty condition of Hart's trousers. The man had been digging potatoes in them, and the germ thrived particularly in well-manured ground