TRAGEDY AT MATAMATA

Matamata Record, Volume II, Issue 97, 12 September 1918, Page 4

TRAGEDY AT MATAMATA

Young Girl Run over by the Express Ail inquest into the circumstance attending the death of Alma Hintz, who was killed by the AucklandRotorua express near Matamata last Thursday afternoon, was held at. the Rotorua Magistrate’s Court Friday afternoon before Captain H. R. Macdonald, J.P., acting coroner, and a jury of six. Dr M. D. Price stated that he had examined the deceased’s body. The skull was crushed and the brain almost destroyed. This must have produced instantaneous ideath. Thei’e was an enormous number of other injuries to the body. Thomas Bailey Luxton, enginedriver on the railway, deposed that he drove the express on Thursday from Frankton to Rotorua. When about a mile on the Rotorua side of Matamata he saw the deceased alongside the railway line, on the right-hand side. She had no hat on, and was about 200 yards from tho train, which was travelling at about 35 miles an hour. When the train was about five yards from her she threw herself in front of the engine. Her action did not appear to be an attempt to cross the line. The engine and three carriages passed over her. Witness applied the emergency brake immediately he saw her take the jump, and pulled up very quickly, but there was no possible chance of preventing an accident. Witness and the guard got off the train. The guard got the remains from under the wheels. The deceased was then quite dead. The bo'dy was placed in the guard’s van and brought to Rotorua. To the acting-coroner: The draught caused by the engiuo passing would not draw tho deceased under the train. To a juror: The deceased did not seem excited when ho saw her. She was standing quietly beside the track, as if waiting for the train to go by. Albert Victor Keat, fireman on the railway, who was on the engine of the express on Thursday, corroborated the evidence of the last witness, and added that when the driver first noticed the deceased he sounded the whistle as a warning, bjit she took no notice of it. Oliver James Hall, guard on the Auckland-Rotorua express ou Thursday, also gave corroborative evidence. Joseph Ambrose Hintz, dairy farmer, Matamata, deposed that he identified tho body of deceased as that of his daughter, Alma Hintz. She would have been 17 years old on October 28th next. For the last three years her health 1 lad been bad. Three weeks ago she went to the Hamilton hospital for an operation for appendicitis. That operation was not performed, but another operation for sciatica or somothing else was. She was paralysed in tho left arm and leg. She had corresponded with a man for 12 months and then found out that ho was a married man and going under an assumed name. This seemed to trouble her greatly. She was to leave the Hamilton hospital on Thursday and to come home by tho Rotorua express, and witness was to meet her She came, however, on the goods train half an hour previously, and left a message with tho stationmaster that she was going to a friend’s. The witness identified the hat found near the line and a dress-basket found in the Matamata station as having belonged to the deceased. The jury returned a verdict that the deceased came to her death through being run over by the engine and throe carriages of the AueklandRotorua express, having thrown herself in front of the engine while in a state of mental depression induced by ill-health.