DROWNING ACCIDENT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 254, 27 October 1938, Page 7

DROWNING ACCIDENT

the JURY’S VERDICT DEATH OF HEIR TO MOTOR-CAR FORTUNE Received Oct. 26. 5.5 p.m. NEW YORK, Oct. 25. A coroner’s jury at Little Current, Ontario, gave a verdict that Daniel Dodge, aged 21, heir to a 9,000.000 dollars motor-car fortune, who met a tragic death in the lake district at Mindemoya, Ontario, last August, was accidentally drowned. He fell from a speed-boat which was racing for treatment of wounds he had received in a dynamite explosion in which he was injured painfully but not fatally, according to medical evidence. According to a Montreal message on August .15, Dodge found a stick of dynamite at a hunting lodge where he was spending his honeymoon with a former telephone girl whom he married after a romantic courtship. Dodge was drying the dynamite inside the lodge when it exploded. His face was mangled and his wife’s legs injured. A launch was taking the party back to Montreal when Dodge, apparently crazy with pain, suddenly jumped overboard into 90 feet of water. His body was recovered weeks later. Severe Criticism The newspapers ar? publishing severe criticism of the Federal authorities responsible for the non-function-ing of the Lorenze beacon which, if working, would, it is claimed, assuredly have saved the Kyeema and 18 lives from disaster. Mr. G. A. Robinson, managing-direc-tor of Airlines of Australia, to-day revealed that pilots had actually brought the airliners home to Mascot from Adelaide and Brisbane on the Lorenze beacon and voted it 100 per cent, efficient, but after that experiment it had been switched off, apparently to await the Civil Aviation Department's own official tests in its own time. Mr. K. M. Fremin, president of the Institute of Air Pilots, said: “We know what caused the accident. What we want is an inquiry into the policy and administration which made an accident of this kind not only possible but likely to occur again at any time.” The identification of the IS bodies of the Kyeema disaster began to-day at the Melbourne morgue. Considerable difficulty was experienced in identifying at least five. Mr. Hawker's relatives have declined a State funeral. The remnants of the airliner were completely burned to-day by the police in order to remove all trace from the crowds. The Kyeema was insured for £25,000.