“GUNPOWDER PLOT”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23828, 7 June 1939, Page 7

“GUNPOWDER PLOT”

CULPRIT CONFESSES TWELVE-YEAR-OLD BOY '[Per United Press Association) AUCKLAND, June 6. . A 12-year-old boy, who lives with his parents at New Lynn, has confessed that on Monday afternoon he broke the lock from the explosives magazine at the local premises of the' Amalgamated Brick and Pipe Company. Ltd., and made a pilfe of gelignite and detonators aggregating 801 b in weight, with the intention of setting it off. Experts said to-day that had the boy been successful the resultant explosion would have shattered every window in the district, and that had the pile been clone to the works extensive damage would have been done.

Two lucky elements in the incident are that when the boy ran away the wind blowing across the paddock extinguished the candle that was to ignite the fuse and that the explosives were 100 yards from the factory walls. Late on Monday evening Constable Boag learned the. identity of the boy who had given three other boys some aluminium detonators while they were at a picture theatre He went to the boy's house, and from a drawer in a chest beside the boy's bed he found five detonators In the presence of his mother the boy admitted his 1 attempt at touching off' the explosives and that he had liven the detonators to other boys. He said that he. had used an iron bar to force off the padlock from the brick magazine which housed the gelignite.