DARING ASSAULT

Waipawa Mail, Volume LIII, Issue 149, 12 September 1932, Page 3

DARING ASSAULT

ARREST OF A HALF-CASTE MAORI. AUCKLAND, Last night. A Eureopean girl aged 18 was brutally assaulted on Pukekohe West road at 11 o’clock on Saturday night when cycling home from Pukekohe. As a result a half-caste Maori, aged 26, was arrested by Sergeant J. T. Cowan and Constable C. W. Powell about 6 p.m. to-day, and will appear in the Pukekohe Magistrate’s Court to-morrow.

The girl, who is in domestic service at the residence of a farmer at Pukekohe West, three miles from Pukekohe, had been to the pictures and was accompanied part of the way home by a young man who had to leave her in order to catch the last bus fo his home. When she was just beyond the borough boundary, about two miles from town, she was overtaken by another person on a bicycle who struck her a blow. She increased her speed in an attempt to outpace her attacker to the nearest house, about a quarter of a mile away. However, she was struck again, this time being knocked from her cycle. She was dragged to the side of the road. Grappling fiercely with her assailant, she managed to free herself as a car arrived from the direction of Pukekohe. She stepped into the light of the headlight? and the car stopped. In it were Messrs Steenson brothers, of Pukekohe AVest. The girl was taken to her home. She was suffering from minor cuts and abrasions received in the scuffle. The police went to a Maori whare at the back of a farm at Pumi, about five miles from the spot where the assault took place and arrested a halfcaste who lives by himself.