A FATAL QUARREL.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 144085, 2 May 1913, Page 2

A FATAL QUARREL.

VERDICT OF INQUEST. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, May 1. The inquest into the death of Manuel Santos, who died on April 18 after a fight with Harold Gladstone Brown on the Harbour Board's pile-driving pontoon, concluded to-day. Aousta Ojala, foreman in the board’s employ, described the fight and deceased’s fall into the water. He said that Brown; seemed afterwards to be sorry for what he had done. David Penman, engineer, said that h© did not see the first Wow struck. The combatants were separated by/; the. man who was working the. pde-driver, and each man wait hack to his wwrk. .A.few minutes later Santos again went up to Brown and said something, tohun, and Brown retaliated: by pushing Santos, who fell into .the haffepar. Brown merely pushed him—he did not strike him. Subsequently, when de-. qeased was in the engine-room, witness, heard him cry out: “Oh, my heart!” The Coroner briefly addressed the jury, and stated that the evidence absolutely reduced the case to on© of manslaughter. The medical evidence was; erf the highest importance. The doctor had ascribed death to syncope, fol-. lowing on blows on the head and the: immersion, and th© evidence showed that blows had been struck by Brown. The jury, ho thought, had no option but to bring in a verdict of manslaughter. ; . The jury returned a verdict that death was due to syncope, following l on, blows on the head struck by Harold Gladstone Brown, and that Brown,feloniously caused the death of Maund Sautos.