ATTACK AT NIGHT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 41, 17 January 1938, Page 9

ATTACK AT NIGHT

INCIDENT NEAR AUCKLAND. WOMAN’S EXPERIENCE. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, Jan. 16. There was a sensational occurrence near Albany at 10 o’clock last night, when a middle-aged single woman, who was alone in her two-roomed cottage in a lonely part of the Paremoremo Road, was assaulted by a man. Hearing her muffled cries for help, two men, who were asleep in their camp several hundred yards distant, rushed to her gate to find her lying on the ground in her night attire. After a struggle in which a cattle dog played an important part, they overpowered a njan and bound him up with rope until the police arrived to take the suspect into custody. Although she did not show any outward signs of injury, the woman suffered severely from shock and was unable to give the police an account of what took place. Almost hysterical, she was taken hack to her home and put to bed by a neighbour. There she remains. The woman is a sufferer from rheumatism and cannot move about freely. According to the little she told the police and those who went to her assistance, she was in bed at 10 o’clock on Friday night when someone called and asked her the way to Riverhead. After that she was unable to recount a connected story of the night’s sensational happenings except to state that a man tried to choke her.

The small cottage occupied by the victim is situated about 250 yards from property owned and occupied by Messrs Alfred Anderton and Ernest William Anderton. The Anderton brothers are at present engaged in breaking in the land and are camped upon it. The peace and quiet of the moonlight night was disturbed at TO o’clock by piercing cries which awakened both. Realising that the frantic cries for help could only come from one place, the house of their neighbour, they dashed over to her home and found her lying on the ground near her front gate. A man was several feet away. The woman was screaming. Observing that the man was in the act of putting on his shoes or boots and about to make off, the Anderton brothers closed with him. A scuffle, which soon became a. struggle, ensued for some minutes until a large black cattle-dog belonging to the Andertons took a hand. The dog without encouragement got a firm hold on one of the struggling man’s ears and held him on the ground. Obtaining a short length of rope, one of the Anderton brothers bound the man’s wrists together and kept him on the ground while his brother left to obtain assistance from Mr G. K. Prebble, a farmer, who lives about a mile and a-half away. He met Mr Prebble, who was on his way to the woman’s house in his car. "Although mv place is so far away I heard the calls for assistance, and so I set off in my car to see what the trouble was,” said Mr Prebble. “The cries I heard were from the Andertons, who were afraid that in the struggle the man might escape. On the way to the scene I met Mr Alfred Anderton. who told me of the startling occurrence, so I called in at the house of mv sharemilker, where there was a telephone, and communicated with the Takapuna police.”