YOUNG MAN KILLED

Taranaki Daily News, 21 October 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

YOUNG MAN KILLED

MURDERER ESCAPES IN CAR.

James John, aged 25, a labourer, of Collingwood, Melbourne, was fatally wounded early one morning recently when a man fired six shots at him. He was walking home along Gore Street, Fitzroy, when a man jumped from a motor-car and fired the shots.

The man sprang back into the car, which was driven by another man, and the car disappeared at a high speed into an adjoining street. The shooting occurred at 1.40 a.m., and John died in the Melbourne Hospital at 2.45 a.m. One of the bullets passed through the back of his neck, another perforated his left lung, a third lodged in his stomach, and two bullets lodged in his thighs. Jack Chrisfield, a boxer, with whom John was walking home, was not fired at. The police say they believe the murder of John may have arisen from a shooting affray two days earlier, in which Daniel Hossack, aged 25, was wounded in the back.

Chrisfield told the police that he, John and three other men left a club at midnight to go home. They walked through the Exhibition Gardens to the comer of two streets, where two of the men left them. The third left a little later. Chrisfield said that as he and John approached his (Chrisfield’s) home John noticed a grey touring car behind them, and said: “We are. being followed. Perhaps it is a police car.” Tire car passed them slowly and stopped about 10 yards ahead of them. A man jumped out from alongside the driver and fired a pistol at John, who fell. Holding one hand over his face, apparently to hide his identity, the man fired two more shots at John. The murderer then advanced and fired three shots into the fallen man’s back.

Chrisfield ran away soon after the first shot was fired. One of the six shots fired missed John and buried itself in the asphalt footpath.