THE FATALITY AT MOERAKI

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3749, 9 February 1907, Page 4

THE FATALITY AT MOERAKI

v — * Mr Hutcheson’s Terrible Death. Dunkdin, This DayRegarding the fatality at Moeraki, where a well-known citizen succumbed to injuries inflicted by a shark, Mr N. Culling, who has been a resident of the district for the past thirty years, states that Mr Hutcheson was bathing with his son at what is recognised as i the regular bathing place of! Moeraki. It is off a sandy beach, in a little bay. There used to lie a bathing enclosure in this bay, but the concrete wall has crumbled away h places, and the enclosure is now never used by bathers. It was about 30 yards to the north of this that Mr Hutcheson and his son were bathing. On being bitten he told his son to go ashore. He had started to obey, but seeing his father in trouble went to his assistance again, and help°.d to get him ashore. Mrs Hutcheson had been silting on the beach not far away, and as soon as possible a towel was wrapped round Mr Hutchison’s leg, which was stripped from behind the knee to near the ankle. At this time the unfortunate victim was just breathing and no more, and he died a lew minutes afterwards. All the arteries in the leg had been severed, for the calf had been bitten clean through. No one who Was about at the time saw anything of the shark. Mr Culling says that he never dreamed that there were sharks, at least of any size, round that part of the coast. There have been some five hundred visitors to Moeraki this summer, and most of them have bathed in the very locality where the accident happened. Mr Culling also says that he and others have long been in the habit of fishing with a net in that bay, and in putting the net out they waded into the water over their waists, the end or outside men being up to their necks.