TRAGEDY IN A GAOL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 40016, 29 October 1929, Page 4

TRAGEDY IN A GAOL.

PRISONER FATALLY STABBED,

TJIRUST WITH A KNIFE,

Victor Walter Hunter, aged 29, a prisoner in. the gaol at Cootamxuidra, New iSouth Wales, was killed (while preparing breakfast in the prison recently. Gaol officials who rushed into the room after hearing Hunter scream saw him dead on the , floor. He had been stabbed with a i knife, and must have died almost [instantly. Dramatic incidents succeeded the [crime. Lawrence Angelo Cronin, a prisoner, who was to have appeared at Cootamundira Supreme Court , three days later, on a charge of shooting with intent to murder John William Baker at Hills ton, rushed into the exercise yard brandishing a knife. Seeng Warden Humphreys and Gaoler John Reardon lie rushed toward them, but was disarmed. It is alleged that Cronin made a statement to the police. “I thought he was trying to poison me,” he is alleged to have said. (Cronin was placed in a padded cell. The victim was a native of Scotland and had been in Australia since 1925. (Recently he was sentenced to a month's imprisonment for stealing a pair of shoes. Cronin, a returned soldier, was suffering from shell shock, is well known in the district. The)re were only three prisoners in the gaol at the time of the tragedy, and it was Hunter’s turn, to prepare breakfast. Cronin was missed from the yard, and the next thing gaol officials heard was Hunter’s scream as he was attacked. The Iknife pierced his chest to the lung and severed an artery. The third prisoner rushed into the kitchen to Hunter’s assistance, hut the latter was then beyond aid. “Put that knife down,” Warden Humphreys called out as Cronin rushed at him. The man dropped the weapon. Some years ago Cootanumdra gaol was the scene of another tragedy. A IChinese prisoner, who was sawing wood, turned on Gaoler Brown and knocked bun down. He then decapitated Brown with the saw>