DEATH AT BLACK POINT, AWAMOKO.

Evening Star, Issue 3741, 18 February 1875, Page 3

DEATH AT BLACK POINT, AWAMOKO.

Tie inquest held on the body found at Black Point, Awamoko, on the 10th inslant, resulted in an open \erdict being returned. From what we (‘North Otago Times’) can learn, it appears that on the 2nd February, a man named Thomas Howard, a carpenter, working at Mr Donald Borrie’s farm, Papa kaio, took hia blankets, before breakfast, to the door of the house, and seeing Mrs Borrie, threw them down on. the ground, saying at •s,'tho time, “A Chinaman slept in my blankets last night, Mrs Borrie, and ITl* not use them again till you wash them.” The fact of the man having slept in the blankets himself goes a long way to justify the surmise that he was suffering from delirium tremens ; indeed, Mr Peattie, one of the witnesses at the inquest, said be was very much given to drink. After throwing down hit. blankets, Howard went over to Beattie's Hotel, and arrived there about Sa.m,, where on obtaining a glass of beer, he informed Mrs Peattie that he was going up to Gardner’s station, at Maerewhenna. and asked her if he could leave a small bucdle with her for a few days, telling her tlir.t he would send for it as soon as he wanted it, Mrs Peattie noticed when the man was talking to her that the thumb on his left hand was slightly twisted, and that the nail grew almost up to the 7 joint. Howard left Peattie’a Hotel a few minutes alter 8 o’clo. k that morning, and was never seen or heard of again. On Wednesday f last, the six men, farm laborers, employed by Mr John Johnston, Awamoko, left his home farm in a dray to proceed to his other farm, four miles away. In passing Black Point, one of the men saw a man lying as he supposed, drunk, a few yards off the track which leads to the Maerewhenua station, Ihree of the men jumped out of the dray, and on approaching the man lying on the ridge, found (that he was dead He Was evidently a young man, between twenty-

5 oven and thirty, light ourly hair, slight build, square shoulders, five feet nine, inches in height. He had on, when found light tweed troweers aad vest, and new elastic side boots. This account of the body tallies exactly with the appearance of the man Thomas Howard, who left Peattie’s on the 2nd to go to Maerewhenua, so there is now very littlo doubt that it is the same man. Tim-body when found was/Very much decomposed, so much so that it was* impossible recognise it by the features, the eyes and uoxc having been completely eaten away, nothing was found on tho body but a box of matches and an old pocket-knife.