YOUTH FABRICATES ASSAULT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16454, 16 June 1921, Page 7

YOUTH FABRICATES ASSAULT.

NERVOUS OF THE DARK. [Per Press Association.! AUCKLAND, June 15. It was reported to the police at Tuakau on Sunday that on the previous night a railway cadet, Ellis C. Bowbyes, had been accosted and brutally assaulted on a lonely part of the road between the railway station and the boarding house at which he lodged. Prompt search of the district was made, by the Pukekohe police, and later Detective-Sergeant Hammond made inquires at Tuakau. Not only the scene of the alleged assault but also the story of Bowbyes was closely scrutinised for a clue, and some unexpected discrepancies in the account of the affair led the detective to concentrate on .obtaining confirmation of the story.

vy.i 1-, ..... cuv,!,. It was established than one night before Saturday a resident was accosted at tho place concerned and the matter had been a subject of discussion afc Bowbves’s boarding house. Then Bowbyes, a youth of seventeen years, was invited to describe minutely the course of the assault he said he had stiffere<

and to explain how kicks definitely alleged to have been, dealt on his boa and a suspected blow from a sandbag had left no mark oil him. Under cross-examination and scrutiny the youth failed to sustain his tale, and he eventually confessed taht it was a hoax, suggested. by the incident of the other man being accosted, and perpetrated because he was nervous of having to pass this part of the road in the dark and early hours of tho morning in the course of his railway duty. Jn military’parlance the previous incident had “ put tlur. wind up him.”