MURDER CHARGES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26028, 17 December 1945, Page 4

MURDER CHARGES

SYDNEY WATERSIDE WORKER ACQUITTED IN ONE CASE SYDNEY, Dec. 15. Arthur Joseph O’Keefe, waterside worker, was acquitted in the Central Criminal Court of having murdered Joseph Royston Paton in a Paddington residential on t September 17. O’Keefe, who pleaded not guilty, said he fired the revolver in self-defence when Paton attacked him. After his acquittal O’Keefe was charged with having murdered Henry James O’Connor and with wounding James Sullivan and Norman Stanton Bolger* with intent to murder, all on September 17. He was remanded for trial. A charge of double murder was laid against Arthur Joseph O’Keefe, aged 22. who was arrested following the affray in a house in Paddington in which two men were shot dead and three were wounded. O’Keefe was also charged on two counts of shooting with intent to murder. Those fatally shot were Henry James O’Connor, aged 30. a labourer, and Joseph Paton. alias Ronald Connors, aged 27, a labourer. Two of the wounded are in a serious condition, but the other wounded man was allowed to leave the hospital. All the men shot are known to the police, who,describe the shooting as the sequel to a three-days’ feud. The police have been told that the shooting occurred during a brawl, in .which O’Keefe was knocked to the floor and a portion of his nose bitten off. O’Keefe appeared in court with his face heavily bandaged. Paton, one of the dead men, had recently completed a long gaol term, given him for biting off part of a man’s nose.