CHINESE VETERANS.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18896, 11 January 1927, Page 11

CHINESE VETERANS.

AFFRAY IN HOME. ACCUSED MAN'S HALLUCINATIONS. ■ • (THE TEBSS Special Service.] ■ DUNEDIN, January 10. When Kum Chong, a Chinese, 76 years of age, was charged this morning iu the Police Court with having don© actual bodily harm to a fellow countryman, Charlie Loo' Hung, he began shouting in his. native tongue and refused to listen to the lady interpreter when she endeavoured to read the charge to him.

Asked by the Magistrate i what accused was saying, the interpreter replied: "He says he is sixty years old liudis a Scotchman and mot a Chinaman. He arrived here to-day and doesn't know what they are looking at him .for."

Accused was at length quietened and Sub-Inspector Fouhy told- the story. It appeared that both accused and complainant were inmates of the Old Men!s Home at Caversham and were friends up to December 13th, on which date Loo Hung had killed a blackbird, an action to which Kum Chong strongly objected. On December loth accused was observed assaulting complainant with some instrument. Attendants from the Home had come out and rescued Hung,;who.had subsequently been in hospital for eight days. Dr. Cecily May Clarkson gave evidence of-the wounds suffered by Hung which were described as severe lacerations of the face and neck such as could have been inflicted with a pocket knife. Charlie Loo Hung (aged seventy-four) said he and Chong came from the same village in China. Chong had attacked him in Alexandra street, pushed him to the ground, and poked a knife into him. Accused again became voluble and the interpreter explained that Chong declared he had killed the man he followed, and. that the man giving evidence was' not the man he killed. His Worship requested the subinspector to make the evidence as short as possible, adding that he intended to request the Minister for Justice to have the accused detained in a mental hospital. Accused's volubility was taken to be a plea of not guilty and he was formally committed to the Supreme Court for trial.