INQUEST.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5760, 2 January 1897, Page 5

INQUEST.

An inquest was held at Lyttelton on New Year's Day on the body of the boy Robert Richard Durham, who died from injuries received by falling from a bank in Coleridge Street. The evidence of Thomas Kent and Mrs Denny was to the effect that on tbe evening of Dec. 27 they saw the boy walking on the top rail of a fence close to the edge of a bank in Coleridge Street. They saw him fall, and when picked up he was unconscious. Dr Guthrie, Who attended the deceased, deposed that he died from injuries received to the spine and brain, and a verdict was returned acaccordingly.

Inspector Broham this morning received a telegram from Constable Parker at Waimate, stating that Elizabeth Hunt, thirty years of age, the wife of William Hunt, a farmer, had been found drowned in a well yesterday. The deceased, who had not been in good health, left her bedroom about two o'clock yesterday morning, and was not missed for a few minutes. A search was then made, and she was found three hours later, drowned in five feet of water.

Mr H. Jon,es, the cab-driver, who encountered the train at the Sydenham crossing this morning, is doing - as well as could be expected. One of his legs is broken at the thigh, and the other cut, in addition to which injuries ho has received a thorough shaking and bruising. Mr Jones states that tho train was upon him before ho noticed it, and that no whistlo or alarm was given. He endeavoured to turn his horse down tho lino at once, and had partially succeeded when tho train struck tho horse. Each Successive carriage struck the cab after the horse was killed, and he remembers being rolled over and over frequently. Jones regards tho escape of his passenger, M'Quaid, as almost miraculous.