WOUNDED PRISONER.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 228, 26 September 1929, Page 9

WOUNDED PRISONER.

MUCH BRIGHTER TO-DAY. PROSPECTS OF RECOVERY. "I DIDN'T THINK THEY'D SHOOT ME, BUT THEY DID." After hovering between life and death since he was shot last Friday afternoon while attempting to escape from Mount Eden gaol, John Leslie Buckley, the 20-year-old prisoner who escaped 011 a previous occasion, is now making good headway, at the Auckland Hospital, and his complete recovery is probable. Since admission to the hospital, a warder has been continually by his lied. It has now been ascertained that Buckley had openly said in the gaol that he intended to make a break if he ever got a chance, and for that reason a close watch was kept on him. Last Friday afternoon he was drilling with other prisoners in one of the exercise yards. He saw the shadow of a chance when a warder's back was turned, and with a promptitude which characterises all his movements,, he made a dash for the eastern wall of the prison. He climbed swiftly up a drain-pipe, and was poising himself for the 30-foot drop to the ground. There was a crack of a rifle. Buckley fell in a heap, staggered through the grounds of a warder's home adjoining the gaol, heaved himself with a desperate effort across a low stone wall, and then staggered fully ten yards through rocks and fennel before he collapsed. , "I didn't think they'd shoot me, but they did,'' said Buckley to his mother when she visited him at the hospital. He was much brighter this morning, and remarked to those at the bedside. "I'm getting better now. I'm going to pull through."