MURDEROUS ATTACK.

Patea Mail, 14 June 1881, Page 4

MURDEROUS ATTACK.

The Kingston correspondent of the South Australian Advertise)' gives particulars of a murderous attack made on a trooper by a man in his charge. Trooper Pearce had arrested a man named Robert Johnson on a charge of supplying intoxicating liquors to the blacks. Both men were riding together, but when they had gone for about two miles the prisoner alighted from his horse and refused to proceed any further. On the threat of the handcuffs, he agreed to proceed quietly. While the trooper was remounting the prisoner attacked him with a large knife, stabbing him in the back, and in defending himself Pearce got his hands hacked about so frightfully that he was not able to make any use of his revolver. The wretch followed up his first assault by the trooper in various parts of the body, and made a wound in the abdomen, out of which the bowels of the unfortunate Pearce protruded. The trooper then fell in a state of exhaustion, his horse was set adrift, and he was left to die on the road had not help come to him. The miscreant was at a later stage captured by sergeant Morris, Pearce died a few days after the occurrence.