DEATH BY ACCIDENT

Taranaki Daily News, 5 August 1937, Page 7

DEATH BY ACCIDENT

By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.

MAN KILLED IN STREET STRUCK IN WOMAN'S FALL SUICIDE FROM WINDOW "NO FELONIOUS INTENT"

London, Aug. 3. The coroner, Mr. Ingleby Oddie, recording a verdict of suicide in connection with the death of Mrs. Mary Warburton, aged 65, who fell from the fourth floor of a building on to a young man, killing him and injuring herself fatally, drew a distinction between constructive murder and constructive manslaughter, which was interesting nowadays, he said, because it was not so strictly interpreted as f ormerly, inasmuch as a motorist killing a person by driving dangerously was usually pimished for dangerous driving without being charged with manslaughter. Mr. Oddie expressed the opinion that a verdict of murder would be improper in the present case, though an old legal doctrine established that when a person committing a felony unintentionally killed another he was guilty of constructive murder. Similarly a person committing a misdemeanour and unintentionally causing another's death was guilty of constructive. manslaughter, but since Mrs, Warburton was not fully in possession of her; faculties when she committed suicide she was not guilty of felonious intent. For that reason the death of Donald Black, the young man an whom she fell, was accidental, and a verdict was returned accordingly. / Mrs. Warburton's husband disclosed that his wife had ^previously attempted suicide.