MURDER CHARGE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 8 April 1931, Page 5

MURDER CHARGE.

SEQUEL TO ALLEGED ASSAULT. TWO MEN ACCUSED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.! TIMARU, Tuesday. Following an inquest to-day touching the death of Robert Galvin Rahilly Nisbctt, aged 2(5, who died in the Tiniaru Public Hospital at 4 a.m. yesterday as the result of an alleged assault with robbery in a motor car in 'Conoor road on Saturday afternoon, John Henry Fitzgerald and Thomas James Cox were formally charged with murder and remanded to appear at the Magistrate’s Court oil ’Wednesday, April 15. Evidence was given at the inquest before a Justice of the Peace and a jury' of six to the effect that deceased had been seen struggling with another man in a car coming down the hill in Conoor road.

According to the depositions of two boys, aged 12 and 11 respectively', tHe deceased was seen to be endeavouring to get out of the car, which was travelling fast Fitzgerald held him from behind. He apparently fell, and the wheel of the car passed over his left thigh, which Dr. R. D. King stated was reduced to pulp. When Constable W. Devine arrived on the scene there was no sign of Fitzgerald or Cox, whose car was subsequently found further down the road, round a corner. Fitzgerald made a bid to escape, and was arrested after a grim struggle. In his dying depositions, taken on Sunday evening at the Fublic Hospital, Nisbett stated that he was struck twice on the jaw by Fitzgerald, but to-day Drs. King and McKenzie said that they did not notice cuts or bruises on the deceased’s face. They admitted to Inspector A. S. Bird, who handled the case for the police, that they had not looked for signs of an assault. The jury, after a short retirement, returned a verdict that deceased died from loss of blood and shock, caused by a car accident in Conoor road.