IN HIS SHIRT

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 134, 29 January 1932, Page 7

IN HIS SHIRT

SUSPECT'S WILD BID LOST HIS TROUSERS WHEN CHASED BY THE POLICE. "PHAR LAP, YOU BEAUTY." SYDNEY, Wednesday. Trams stdpped', traffic . jammed, startled heads popped from windows, women screamed and men cheered as a suspect, attired only in a very short shirt, dashed down Bayswater Road, Darlinghurst, pursued by p'oli'ce and detectives. He had slipped through the detec- ; tive's' fingers when chased last night and they made careful plans for his capture to-day. Four of them walked upstairs to his flat at the. corner of King's Cross Road and Bayswater Road about 8 a.ni., and knbcked at the door. The suspect, who was in bed with his wife, half-pulled on a pair of trous'ers and when he opened the door and saw his visitors, without waiting to make his garments secure, he leape'd for the Window, which opens outward on to the awriing of a chemist's shop, 10 feet Tbelow. The raiding party, comprising detectives Mallon, Pa|rmeter, Keating and others, dashed across the room after him„ and one grabbed hihi by the leg as he was half-way through. In the struggle, the whole window fralh'e gave way, and the suspect, iii a shower of shatfered glass ahd smashed wood, crashed on to the awning. With his trousers flopping ahout his legs, he climhed along the awning td the front stairway of a block of flats next *door. The police hurri'ed down to the streetj ahd ftere 5hst in 'tiihe tb see their man, whose trousers had now fallen around his, feet, kick them of? and spring into Bayswater Road, The man stoo'd for an instant and then sped towards Rushcutters Bay With his shirt-tail ^treaming in the wind. A policeman had been stationed at the hottom of the baek stairs, but the suspect raeed past this entrance. "Phar Lap, You Beauty." He had a lead of ahout 20 yards when the police appeared. Women passengers of passiug trams buried their heads more deeply in the morning paper, but one man shouced excitedly: "Go on, Phar Lap, you beauty!" Women pedestrians, fearing that a maniac was amok, dodged screaming into doorways as the panting and pantless man raeed down the street, but male spectators cheered wildly. The pursuers lost sight of their quarry in Oswald Lane, and he made the best nse of the temporary respite. Grabbing a bathing snit from a clothes-lihe, he donned it and darted into Boundary Street. There, ap~ parently, a friehd lent him a pair of trousers, and, although they were some sizes too large, the confiderice inspired by the feeling that he was again "clothed" helped him in eluding the police.

Another Chase. But a big posse of police and detectives had kept a close watch for him, and some little time later he was sighted in the region of Oxford Street. Again, however, although bootless, the runaWay led the police an excititig chase. He bounded over backyard fences, cut through houses, turned from. One street into another, but was finally cornered in a grocer's shop in Oxford Street. As the police, watched by a huge crowd, were surrounding the premises, he made a last desperate bid for liberty. He dived headlong through a window into busy Oxford Street, landing on his head. And then the police got himstretched out oh the footpath, with blood streamfn'g from ah ugly cut in his head, and he was takeh to St. Vmcent's Hospital. Meanwhile, his wife, who had beeii aroused from her sleep by the crash as her husband dived through the window, had recovered his trouserS', had them neatly stitched up whefe they were torn, ready for his return. . Theo hottom part of one leg had been ripped off. 1 "Poor ToiAmy, he had a very short • shirt oh," was her philosophic com- ; inent.