ACCIDENTS AND DEATHS

Evening Star, Issue 20137, 30 March 1929, Page 11

ACCIDENTS AND DEATHS

BOY, DROWNED. A verdict of drowning by accidentally falling ijito the Makarewa River was returned by the coroner at the inquest at Invercargill on Thursday concerning the death of Robert Duff, aged eleven. who was missed from his home on Thursday, March 2.1, and whose body was found in the Alakamva- River last Tuesday. David Bisset Duff, father of the deceased, said that his son usually crossed the river in a cradle swung on a wire cable between two pulleys. ’Three other children had crossed over before, and his son bad to pul! the cradle back to his side. A breakage in the cradle was reported by another boy, and. when witness went down to the bank bo saw the deceased’s bag there and the cradle halfway across the stream with the handrope swinging in the water. The cable and cradle bad been in use for about six years, and although a footbridge bad since been erected a mile further away, his children preferred using the cradle. Witness thought that the tieceased, in [lulling the cradle back from the other side had slipped and fallen into the river, which was in flood at the time DREDGE EXPLOSION—ANOTHER DEATH. A Wanganui Association message states that Duncan M'Kinnon, one of the two men injured by the explosion in the tunnel of the dredge Kaione, aged fifty-four, died at a late hour last night in the hospital. He was a married man, without family.