A CHILD MURDERED.

Hokitika Guardian, 10 December 1917, Page 1

A CHILD MURDERED.

— AN EXTRAORDINARY CRIME. [PER PRESS ASSOCIATION. —COPYRIGHT.] CHRISTCHURCH December K. The three-year-old child Garrick- who was found murdered this morning was the central figure in a sensational incident. in February, 1915, when a resident of the River Road, Dallington, found the child (then an infant) three weeks old, in the hollui.v of a willow tree. Subsequently the child’s mother,- a single woman named Winifred Carriek, received two years’ imprisonment for abandoning the child. 'Hie infant was committed to the Government Receiving Home, whence it was licensed out to Richard Thomas Burns, labourer of Clifton Street, Addington. ; Burns found the child’s body this morning about t> o’clock in the garden with its head smashed in; evidently !by a spade. It is not clear how the child got into the garden or whether, in fact the crime wa s committed actually on the sp.it whore the body was found. When Burns found the body the child had evidently been dead for some time; though the body was not apparently the yard it seems certain that there could have been little or no outcry on the part of the hapless little victim, and it scenis very probable that it must have been committed prior to 5 n.m. Next door there were people sleeping in a tent in their yard and they heard nothing to disturb them up to about. 5 n.m. when they rrjse An inquest on the child was opened this afternoon. Dr. Scott stated that the cause of death was laceration of the brain, due to fracture of the skull. In the postmortem ho. found wounds and bruises on the tips of the middle linger and forefinger of the left hand, as if the child line! put up its hand in order to protect itself. There was a large bruise on the forehead. All the organs were healthy. A screw wrench ami a spade were found near the body. , The Coroner: Could the tracture have been made by a spade? Witness: Yes, it is consistent wnh a wound caused by a blow with a spade. Dr. Scott*added that the head had been forced into the soft ground, which had been dug up. When the body was raised the head had termed a distinct cup in the ground. It gave the impression that the child was struck first, and then was forced into th c ground. THE AfOTHER ARRESTED. CHRISTCHURCH, Dee. 9. Last night Detective Gibson arrested Winifred Garrick, mother of Donald Lewis Garrick, who was ‘murdered at Addingon yesterday morning, on a charge of murder.