GUN BATTLE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 55, Issue 3928, 19 July 1937, Page 6

GUN BATTLE

DASH THROUGH POLICE CORDON. BANDITS FORCE DOCTOR TO DRESS WOUNDS. New York, April 18. A Londoner, whose name is given as Powers, is alleged to be one of two men captured by the U.S. authorities following a vicious gun battle with G-men in a post office at Topeka, Kansas. This was revealed to-day by Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the G-men, who added that Powers was deported from the United States in 1936, but managed to return by another ship. The desperadoes had evaded a cor-> don which had been thrown round Topeka after the gun battle. Twenty shots were exchanged, the bandits having opened fire when ordered to put up their hands. Four of the shots hit W. W. Baker, one of the G-men, and another struck the leg of a bystander. Baker is in a critical condition. The two men got away in a highpowered car, which they smashed up. They then held up a farmer and forced him to call a docter.

They kidnapped the docter in his own car, forced him to treat the wounds of one of them in the farmhouse, and then drove off without him. The sheriff of Plattsmouth, Nebraska, picked up their trail while they were speeding along in the car which they had taken from the doctor. After following them for eight miles he took them by surprise just as they had temporarily slowed down. According to Mr. Hoover, the man alleged to be a Briton is Alfred Powers, alias Louis Moore. Immigration officials say they have identified Powers as a man who should have been deported to Liverpool from Ellis Island on Nov. 14, 1936, on the ground that at the time of his entry to the United States he was not in possession of an unexpired immigration permit. Powers, the officials add, entered the country without passing an immigration inspection, and served a prison term of a year or more after he had been arrested in New York City, on Oct. 16, 1930, on charges of armed assault and robbery. The deportation order was issued against him, but the police did not succeed in apprehending him. The two arrested men, it is alleged, were wanted in connection with the robbery of a bank at Kotonah, New York State, of £3,680. A third man, Joseph Heckl, has been detained on charges of operating with them in the robbery.