JUMP FROM TRAIN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 96, 26 April 1933, Page 7

JUMP FROM TRAIN

BOXER’S TRAGIC DEATH EVIDENCE AT INQUEST. [ Per Press Association. ] WELLINGTON, April 24. Reduced to a state of great mentai depression through the death of the girl to whom ho was to have become engaged, Harold Frederick Thomas, tho popular lightweight boxer, who represented New Zealand at the last Olympic Ganics, took his own life by jumping from a moving train opposite tho Thorndon Station on the night of March 29, a few hours after tho death of the girl. That was the conclusion arrived at by the coroner (Mr. E. Gilbertson, J.P.) at an inquest held today into the circumstances surrounding the death of the boxer. Mrs. Mary Kirk, mother of tho girl to whom Thomas was about to become engaged, said her daughter died in hospital of Bright’s disease on March 29. Thomas seemed depressed but quite cheerful when he left at about 9 p.m. and said he would call again in the morning. Steward Donald McCallum, a passenger on the train on which deceased travelled from Lambton, said Thomas got up from his seat half a minute after the train was under way and went on to the platform. Ho climbed on to tho telescopic handrails and jumped down between tho rails. His action apparently was quite deliberate and witness had no time to prevent him. The coroner, Mr. Gilbertson, said he was of opinion that Thomas took a train ticket intending to commit suicide in desperation owing to the girl’s death. “It is a thousand pities,” he added, “that a fine young fellow like this should take his own life. It is f pity that he was not sufficiently con trolled to overcome this thing.”