Page 3 Advertisements Column 1

Western Star, 23 March 1920, Page 3

Sheep-stealing on a considerable scale is going on in Eketahuna district. Three adjacent farmers within a few miles of the town find tli.U they have lost between them some 2 : H sheep extending over a period sir. docking. —Express.

The scone of the Ponsonby murderis a pretty red-roofed house, standi) •: a few yards back from the paremer... halfway down Shelly Beach EonHere Mr Braithwaite resided wih his wife, there being no other momher of the family. Mr Braithwai was not on duty on Saturday afte noon, and spent the afternoon playing bowls, but he returned to the poet office at the corner of College Hill and St. Mary’s Road some time before six o’clock —it is believed for the special purpose of getting the keys of the strong room). He spent some time at the office, which closes at 5 p.m. He was seen to leave the building at 7.35 p.m., and sonic twenty-five minutes later the quietude of Shelly Beach Road was disturbed by two sharp reports. Several neighbours appear to have heard t‘>e firing, ,T>ut nobody attached any significance to the noise. Returning from an “At Home” on the Grafts bowling green shortly after eight o’clock Mrs Braithwaite was horrific ' to find her husband lying on the floor near the back door, in the full light of the kitchen gas burner with bleed oozing from his mouth. There is a telephone in the house, and realising that something serious was wrou Mrs Braithwaite rang for assistant' . Dr T. X. I’slier was the first medic : man available, and arriving at 9.35, he could only declare Mr Braithwaite to bo dead. The whole circumstances pointed to the deceased having been shot in opening the back door in response to a knock or in meeting .some intruder. The course of the bullet wounds suggested that the first shot was the one that entered the abdomen.’ Then, as the wounded man fell, a second shot appears to have penetrated the throat, the bullet- taking a slightly ddTrtiwa'r'd doMi'sb.