CHILD ELECTROCUTED

Taranaki Daily News, 5 June 1935, Page 7

CHILD ELECTROCUTED

INQUIRY ADJOURNED NO WIRES BOY COULD REACH. APPARENTLY PLAYING WITH BED. EVIDENCE GIVEN BY MOTHER. By Telegraph—Press Association. : Auckland, List Night. * Evidence concerning the death of Ronald Rudd, aged five and a-half years, who was electrocuted at his parents’ home at Blockhouse Bay was given before Mr. W. R. McKean, S.M., at the inquest to-day. The inquest was adjourned. Annie Metcalfe, grandmother of the dead' boy, said that yesterday morning her. grandson and another child were playing in the back yard near the washhouse. Ronald was missed and shortly afterwards was found behind a galvanised iron shed. He was lying on his right side with his right arm by his *ide and his left arm over his chest. His eyes were shut. He was stretched out at full length and appeared to be dead. He was not wearing boots or stockings • and was found lying on long wet grass. Leaning against the shed was a piece of an old iron bedstead.

The boy’s mother said her son’s right leg was burned and that there were burns across the inside of the fingers of the right hand. There were two separate electric wires ftbm the house, to the shed but they were high up and it would have been impossible for the boy to reach them. It appeared that the boy had been playing with the old bedstead which was lying against the shed. There were no electric wires on the property that the boy could have touched and he could not have got inside the shed as it was locked.