DYING GIRL ON ROAD.

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17385, 23 April 1928, Page 14

DYING GIRL ON ROAD.

“I LOST MY HEADY IS MAN’S EXCUSE. The story of a young woman's pillion ride with a married man, whr admitted that he left her lying in the road after she had fallen from the bark of his motor cycle, was told at an inquest at Hinckley, Leicestershire, on Doris Geary, aged 22. Opening the inquiry, the Coroner told thr, jury that Doris Geary and another girl, Dorothy Nowell, met. two men in an inn at Hinckley, and arranged to meet them there on the following night. They fulfilled the appointment, and after iO o’clock went for a ride with the motor cyclists. Geary was riding with Pierce Albert Humphries, a metal worker, of Weddington, Nuneaton, and the other girl rode on the back of the machine driven by Joseph Williams. The girl Nowell finished up at Trinity Hall, Hinckley, at 11 o’clock, and after waiting for Geary for some time went home without seeing her. Geary was later found in the gutter, on the roadside between Hinckley and Nuneaton. The discovery was made by a bus driver. The girl was taken to the Cottage Hospital, where she died the following morning. Said Nothing for Two Days. The police made inquiries, and Humphries came forward witli a statement. There was no doubt the girl fell off the bicycle. Humphries, according to his statement, stopped, went back, and looked at the girl, and then left her on the roadside. He went hack and said nothing until two nights later. Medical evidence showed that death was due to injuires consistent with the girl having fallen off the bicycle on to the hard road. Dorothy May Nowell described the meetings with the two men and the subsequent pillion ride. Answering the Coroner, she said she would not like to say that the man with whom Doris Geary was riding had had too much to drink, though he was “very jolly.” , Joseph Clifford Williams, a carpenter, of Nuneaton, with whom Miss Nowell was riding, was asked by the Coroner if he made a practice of picking up strange girls and faking them for rides. He said he did not. He was a married man with four children.

Pierce Albert Humphries, the man with whom Doris Geary rode, was the next witness. He said he was a married man with a wife and one child. Describing the accident, lie said that when he was approaching Hinckley his machine wobbled, taking him right across the road and throwing the girl off. His speed was fifteen miles an hour, and he was in second gear, lie stopped, turned back, and found the girl lying on the road. 11c caught her by- the arms and tried to get her to speak. The Coroner: “What then?” Witness: “Being a married man, I lost my head. 1 got on my machine and went home.” Treated Worse Than a Dog. The Coroner: “You left the poor girl alone in the gutter unconscious; you treated her a great, deal worse than people treat dogs.” Witness replied that he did not think the girl was seriously hurt, and, in answer to a further question, said he did not make a practice ol’ taking strange girls for rides. Questioned by the foreman of the

jury, he said that if "he had been a single man he would have stuck to the girl and helped to get her to hospital. The Coroner said he could not understand the mentality of the man who did such a thing. If the girl had been a dog he could not have behaved worse. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death, and stated that the motor cyclist deserved severe censure. The. Coroner, addressing Humphries, said that he did not think anything he said to him would have the slightest effect. To say anything to a person of his mentality, who could leave a girl lying in the gutter, not, knowing whether she was dead or alive, was a waste of words. If that would not be a lesson to him he could not imagine anything in this world that "would.