CATAPULTED INTO AIR

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 25, Issue 3766, 8 June 1936, Page 7

CATAPULTED INTO AIR

BOY’S TRAGIC DEATH.

CAUGHT IN TREEFELLERS’ ROPE.

Sobbing bitterly, a mother stood in the Coroner’s Court at Carshalton, Surrey, recently, and told how she saw a body catapulted 170 feet into the air and later found the body was that of her 12-year-old son. Mrs. Mary Parish described the scene when Stanley Parish, her son, was caught in a rope being used by tree-fellers employed byj the London County Council and hurtled into the air. “I was in the front room,” she said. “Men on the other side of the road were felling trees. I heard the crack a tree, and saw it fall. I saw something go up into the air. I thought it was a branch of a tree. It seemed to float and float and float in the air, and then it seemed to open »ut. That was all I knew until a few minutes later I was called to a neighbour’s back-yard and there I found that it was my son.” *

The jury returned a verdict of accidental death and exonerated the workmen from blame. They added a rider stating that they did not consider that sufficient workmen had been employed by the London County Council.