A Suspicious Case.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 5031, 12 June 1889, Page 2

A Suspicious Case.

(By Tei.eqrapji. )

0 AMARU, June 11

At an early hour this morning the police received information that Mrs Agnes Heywood, wife of W. 11. Hey wood, residing on the North Road, had died suddenly, and that her death was owing to injuries inflicted by her husband. On this information the husband was arrested at about 2 o’clock this morning. An inquest was held to-day, at which the evidence of a sister of deceased went to show that Heywood had not been living on very amicable terms with his wife. It was shown that lie had followed his wife (who was enciente) into her bedroom, and that to escape him she had jumped out of a window; that he had afterwards struck a sister of deceased, and that the latter was shortly afterwards seen lying on the floor, but tbe sister coqjd not say whether Heywood had struck or pushed her, or whether she had fallen. After this the two women left the house, Mrs Heywood being taken ill on the road. She however reached her brother’s house, and becoming unconscious died shortly afterwards. Two doctors were in attendance, and gave evidence that all the organs of the body were healthy, and that death must have been duo to violence of some kind —a blow or a fall—but there were no marks on tbe body of deceased. Death, they said, was due to compression of the brain due to rupture of a blood vessel. The police gave evidence that Heywood had admitted that be had pushed deceased, and that she had fallen on the mat. The jury returned a verdict that deceased had met her death by violence, but how or in what way there was no evidence to show'. Heywood was then discharged from custody.