PRISONERS ESCAPE

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 22606, 10 May 1945, Page 4

PRISONERS ESCAPE

RECENT CHASE RECALLED (By Telegraph—Press Association) DUNEDIN, Thursday By bending three strong steel bars almost an inch in diameter at the top of the grille in the exercise yard at the lock-up in the Central Police Station at 7 o’clock yesterday morning, three prisoners made their escape. Reports were received that they had been seen at Burnside, and three car-loads fcf uniformed and plain clothes policemen were promptly despatched to the scene. One of the men was recaptured this morning in Caversham. He is Robert Mark Johnston, aged 23, who was sentenced on Monday to 18 months’ reformative detention. He was seen at Mornington at 7 a.m. and captured shortly afterward. The other two, Dennis Murphy, aged 19, labourer, of Timaru, and David Warren Hodgkinson, aged 19, rabbiter, of Fairfield, were on remand on charges of the conversion of a motor-car and breaking, entering and theft. When Murphy and Hodgkinson and another youth were before the Court last week and remanded, the police stated that they had been arrested in Central Otago after a sensational police chase, only after shots had been lired over their heads. Owing to the Victory celebrations, the meeting advertised to have been addressed by Mrs Hilda Ross tonight has been cancelled and will now be held on Saturday night.