FIVE SHOTS FIRED

Otago Witness, Issue 4039, 11 August 1931, Page 60

FIVE SHOTS FIRED

A.M.P. MANAGER’S ROOM A MYSTERIOUS ATTACK. AVELLINGTON, August 8. Details are now revealed of a desperate attack on the room of Air C. AL Alartin, general manager of the Australian Alutual Provident Company. The attack took place at 4.30 on a business afternoon recently, and the assailant fired five shots which crashed through the thick plateglass window and struck the wall of the manager’s room, the corner room on the first floor of the new skyscraper which the company erected a few years ago. Fortunately, the inmate of the room had the presence of mind to keep low. Had he attempted to leave the room he must have been struck by one of the bullets.

The neat round holes punctured through the glass now remain, four of them in nne small group, the fifth somewhat higher and to the right. The man who fired these shots remains unknown. The surprising feature of the direction of the shots is that they appear to have come from the first floor of the building diagonally opposite, which is the Bank of Australasia. Yet present information has totally failed to reveal any sign of the desperate attacker. So far the police are without clue and without certainty that they know the spot from which the shooting took place. Unless by some strange freak of direction the bullets came from some other place, they must have been aimed from the same floor of a neighbouring building; yet occupants of near-by structures state that thej - know nothing of revolver shots, and that they have been unable to conjure up any clue to the identity of the person who did the shooting. ''Such a state of affairs, particularly on a business afternoon, is amazing. The only thing which can account for the event is the fact that the shots were fired just before a holiday and that everyone was concentrating upon getting away for the day. The police are continuing their investigations, but, so far, without any sign of success; and in the meantime the five bullet holes remain in the window, mute witness to the most sensational attack in Wellington for many years past.