A FRESH TRAIL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24421, 5 October 1940, Page 12

A FRESH TRAIL

ESCAPED PRISONERS STOLEN CAR FOUND THE SEARCH INTENSIFIED (Per United Press Association) AUCKLAND, ">ct. 4. An observant young woman who saw an abandoned Morris car about a mile from Silverdale to-day, and had read the reports of thefts of petrol and clothing from two places at Massey during Thursday night, gave the police a fresh trail of the four men who escaped from Auckland Prison on Tuesday night. Motor patrols and search parties have since been ranging far end wide. The car was the one stolen from Mr A. M. Jackson's garage at Orakei road, in Remuera, early on Thursday morning, and had evidently travelled over rough territory. When Mr Jackson saw his car at the Central Police Station this afternoon he found that the panels were badly scratched, as though the machine had been forced through scrub country. The exhaust pipe was bent, and the undercarriage was coated with mud. The petrol tank was dry, and on the flooring of the car were several sets of muddy footprints. A seven-year-old schoolboy, John Small, who' lives on the Dairy FlatSilverdale road, about two miles south of Silverdale, said that while he was on his way to school at abcut 8 o'clock on Thursday morning he noticed three men get out of a small motor car and look underneath the concrete bridge just before the ' by-pas to Kaukapakapa. He said they then looked into some scrub at the roadside They then got into the car and drove down the by-pass. He was quite sure, he said, that there were only three men in the car—one in the driving seat arid two others in the back seat—and he saw sufficient of the driver's face to describe him. He told his mother about the incident when he reached home that afternoon, but she attached little significance to it until this morning and when her husband later heard thai Mr Jackson's car had been stolen he advised the police. Just before mid-day a young woman living on a farm along the Kaikapakapa road saw a small car abandoned at the roadside about 50 yards from the main road. One door was wide open, as though someone had lett hurriedly. When she reached Silverdale shortly afterwards she and a friend discussed the matter, and the voung woman copied from the New 'Zealand Herald the number of Mr Jackson's missing car. She returned to the spot where she saw the car. and found that it had two numberplates screwed together on the bacK and one at the front. The front one corresponded with the number she had copied from the newspaper. She turned the screws on the back bracket, lifted the top plate, and found that the lower one also corresponded with that oi (he missing car. She notified the police shortly afterwards. . Meanwhile there is very little change in the condition of the three warders who were assaulted and Iniured at Auckland Prison on Tuesday night Mr J. G. Crawford, aged 62 who was severely injured about the head, was reported by the Auckland Hospital to be still unconscious. and the condition of Mr J. W. Scholium, aged 32, and Mr A. Burgess, aged 43, both of whom had slight concussion and scalp wounds, was reported to "be satisfactory.