Two escapers recaptured

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32819, 20 January 1972, Page 1

Two escapers recaptured

fNew Zealand Press Association >

NELSON, January 19.

The two Invercargill Borstal escapers for whom the police have been searching the Blenheim, Nelson, and Lake Rotoiti areas since January 10 were recaptured about 3 p.m. today after a three-hour pursuit in the Wairau Valley.

A farmer spotted two youths on his farm, about 24 miles west of Blenheim, about 11 a.m. today and alerted the police.

Parties of police from Blenheim, Nelson, and Lake Rotoiti immediately began converging on the area. The first party, from Blenheim, arrived about an hour after being alerted. The youths were then followed by the police and apprehended at Te Rou, in the Wairau Valley, about three hours later.

The relieving superintendent of the Nelson police district (Superintendent E. J. Trappett) praised the action of the farmer involved in alerting the police and keeping the youths under observation while waiting for help to arrive.

The two youths, Allan Raymond Lucas, aged 19, and Owen Christopher Donald, aged 16, escaped from the Invercargill Borstal on New Year’s Eve, and were first sighted at Blenheim on January 10, when they were thought to have brandished a rifle at a police patrol. A search round Blenheim shifted to the Tennyson In-let-French Pass area on January 12 after a reported sighting of the two there, and subsequently to the Lake Rotoiti-Kawatiri area the next day after several sightings of them in that area. Up to 57 police from Nelson, Blenheim, the West Coast, Wellington, and Christchurch were involved in the hunt round Lake Rotoiti for the two youths. But the numbers were reduced to a six-man party from Nelson, under the command of Senior-Sergeant P. W. Bickley, on Monday after no further sighting had been made. R.N.Z.A.F. HELPS From Friday last, the Royal New Zealand Air Force helped in the search with a Devon aircraft and an Iroquois helicopter, and by setting up a mobile kitchen at the Lake Rotoiti temporary search headquarters to feed those involved in the search. Superintendent Trappett also praised the efforts of those R.N.Z.A.F. men involved.