INNOCENT MAN CAPTURED

Southland Times, Issue 23948, 14 October 1939, Page 4

INNOCENT MAN CAPTURED

Unlucky Day For Cyclist

BORSTAL ESCAPEE

SOUGHT Yesterday, Friday the thirteenth, was undoubtedly an unlucky day for one citizen, mainly because the Borstal escapee who was captured at Clyde on Thursday elected to make a second bid ■for liberty. The prisoner arrived under escort at the Invercargill railway station and as soon as he alighted from the train he broke away and ran up Tay street to Nith street where he seized a bicycle and made off down Nith street. The escorting constable was not far behind, and called out to another young man on a bicycle to chase him, as he was an escaped prisoner. Nothing loth the cyclist pedalled after the escapee, and the escorting constable returned to the police station. Soon after, the constable in the watchhouse received a telephone call requesting police assistance at the corner of Conon and Earn street, as somebody was holding the escapee down at that spot. Three constables immediately went out in a car, but on arriving at the place there was no one in sight. The constables then separated in different directions, and a few moments later one of them saw a cyclist, pedalling furiously, with his head down and carrying no light. He immediately gave chase in the car, and signalled to a constable a block ahead to intercept him. The constable in front made a magnificent flying tackle which sent the cyclist spinning. The cyclist was up first and bolted into the trees in Biggar street, where he was chased by the two constables. BLIND MAN’S BUFF Then followed a desperate game of blind'man’s buff in Stygian darkness, until finally a yelp of anguish as the quarry stumbled led the pursuers to the Appleby Cricket Club’s dressing shed where they made their “kill.” One of the constables was just about to fasten the handcuffs on their prostrate prisoner, when he gasped out a frantic appeal. It was only then that the constables realized that they had got the wrong man. Asked to account for his extraordinary conduct, he explained that a drunk man had chased him earlier -nd he was making a panic-stricken flight. The “drunk” man, it was afterwards disclosed, was merely the third policeman, who had accosted him to ask if he was the man who.had rung the station. He had not seen the uniform, and jumping to a hasty conclusion, had fled in terror When the three constables ieturned to the station, they found that the real prisoner had been captured by the young man who had set out after him. and had been brought to the station in a exhausted state. Friday ‘the thirteenth will undoubtedly live for many years in the memory of at least one man, not only because there was an eclipse of the sun that day.