DREADFUL ASSAULT

Otago Witness, Issue 3336, 20 February 1918, Page 22

DREADFUL ASSAULT

MOTHER AND CHILDREN INJURED. An attompt to kill a whole family appears to have been made at an early hour on January 30, in a little ramshackle house situated in the bush midway between Nedlands and Claremont, a lew miles from Perth (states a telegram from Perth to tho Sydney Morning Herald). As a result of an apparently premeditated attack, a mother and two children now! lia in the hospital seriously injured. About 1 o'clock the home of the Murtha family, which is situated in Dalkeith road, was entered by a man named Alfred Richards, who lived in a tent close by. Richards crawled stealthily to the back of the house, armed with a heavy turned jamah tablo leg, and entering' the back door made for the bed in the kitchen occupied by the boy, Jack Murtha. Ho dealt him heavy, blows. His screams awoke the mother, who, on leaving her bedroom .and entering the passage, was met by Richards, and felled with a heavy blow from his club. Her daughter Alice says she heard her mother fall to the ground, and then several other blows struck. The next thing she knew was that Richards was coming into her bedroom, waving the tabla leg about his head. Here the eldest boy, Arthur, was also sleeping. Richards apparently ignored tho girl's presence a moment while he went to the side of the single bed on which Arthur was sleeping, and began, to deal tho unfortunate lad a number of heavy blows on the head. Having finished with tho boy, he turned his attention to the girl, and caught her by the throat. However, the girl had not lost her presence of mind, and she struggled fiercely with the would-ba murderer. Finding that he was seriously challenged, he made off, and up to the present has evaded arrest." Richards, whose age is stated to bo about 35, is employed as a stoker at the Perth gasworks. It was his custom to have his meals with_ the Murtha family, but nothing has transpired which would indicate why he so brutally attacked the family. The most severely injured of the victims of the assault is the bov Jack, who is still unconscious, but not in a critical condition.