POSTMISTRESS ASSAULTED

Chronicle (Levin), 30 July 1949, Page 5

POSTMISTRESS ASSAULTED

Press Association)

— -- I'-flTJ — Man'>Arrested After Longt Search By Police

(Per

TIMARU, July 29. % Miss Lucy Jean Underhill/ postmistress at Pareora, about eight miles from Timaru, Avas brutally ^tacked by a man who hit her on the head with a pair of hedge clippers at 6.30 o'oloek this nxQrnnig. She was treated for head injuries. Soon after 12.30 p.m. a man was arrested in the Pareora disj. trict by Constables W. A. Gregory and W. T. Green, Miss Underhill opened np the store and post office soon after 6 a.m. and counted up a considerable sum of money. She took her car out of the garqge and baeked it to a side door for- loading the day 's deliveries, theq went back into the shop. , As she came out again a man hit her on the head with 'a pair of hedge clippers and she fell to the ground. Her father and sister who live next to the shop heard her screams for help and fqund her in a distressed condition with injuries over the left eyebrow and'on the left hand. Her assailant 1iad disappeared. Constable W. Shepherd, of Pareora, and a local resident who Set out to make a search by car found an aban doned bicycle on the road near Brooklands .Hill and soon after saAV a man running. through a plantation with a coat over his head. A search party was organised and later was reinforced by a police party in charge of Senior Detective J. W. Hill .and Sergeant C. J. E. Bisset, of Timaru, and the country between Pareora and Timaru was thoroughly combed. At 12.18 a.m. Constables Gregory and Green in company with Messrs. Samuel Hawkwprth Midgley and Donald David Henry, of Pareora, were palrolling -the .lupins on the foreshore of the beach north of Pareora. They saw a man come 4out of a flax bush , and run towards a patch of lupins. Constable Gregory and Mr, Midgley closed in .on the lupins and caught him. The man offered no resistanee. . He was inter-vi-ewed by Senior Detective Hill and Detective F. R. Hearsey and' taken to the Timaru police station. He will be charged with assault at the Timaru Magistrate 's Court tomorrow.