OPEN VERDICT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26847, 11 August 1948, Page 6

OPEN VERDICT

DEATH OF SECRETARY SUICIDE THEORY REJECTED P.A. WELLINGTON. Aug. 10. A suicide theory was rejected by the coroner, Mr W. G. Mellish, when the inquest into the death of Stanley Alexander Vine, aged 39, was concluded at Petone to-day. Vine, who was secretary of the Wellington Citizens’ Cooperative Society, was found dead on the bank of the Hutt River on June 29 The coroner found that death was due to drowning and that there was no evidence to show how Vine came to be in the water. The circumstances surrounding the death of Vine had been the subject of a good deal of rumour, Mr Mellish said. A shortage of £332 in the funds of the society nad been found by the auditors. This had been based on an assumed rate of profit. There was a shortage of, possibly £ 150 in a period of about three weeks before Vines death, when no banking was done, rhe president of the society had stated in evidence, however, that Vine- was a popular man and if through lack of experience in a business of this kind he had got into difficulties the matter could have been put right. A shortage of £l5O would not justify an assumption of suicide, Mr Melush said, and if there had been no talk of a shortage there would have been none of suicide The shortage of £332 found by the auditors could have been explained, if goods had been sold at a lower price than they should have been, the president of the Wellington Citizens’ Cooperative Society, William Arthur Fox, said in evidence. The banking had been done regularly till about three weeks before Vine’s death. There was £4O in the shop till when the shop was opened after Vine’s death. Vine was to have attended a meeting of the society’s directors on June 28