CHASED BY POLICE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 150, 17 February 1932, Page 2

CHASED BY POLICE

BULLETS SPRAY CAR detEctives pursue train thieyes across country. driver's narrow escape. SYDNEY, Saturday. During the chase and capture near Sutherland early this morning of thieves who were carrying off goods thrown from a moving train, police fired eight shots and tore clothes and flesh while pursuing the men through wild country .and across barbed wire fences. Hidden on a goods train travelling at 1.30 a.m. to-day between Como and Sutherland, Railway-Detective Norley saw several crates of foodstuffs lying near the Jannali siding. a telephone call to the Sutherland police, when the train reached Heathcote, sent Detectives Payne and Bur- , rows and Constables Murphy and Cut- | more hot on the trail of the suspected , robbery. j Between Como and Sutherland the j line winds between steep cuttings j along an up-grade of 1 in 40, and trains travel at little more than five miles an hour. It has been the practice of thieves recently to- throw goods from the slow-moving trains to accomplices on the track. Warning Bullet. While his three comrades climbed down the cutting on to the line, Constable Cutmore, guarding the road, travelled on and came across three men with a touring-car, into which : had been loaded some large wooden ■ crates. • The car was moving off as the constable, on his motor-cycle, rounded a bend in the road. Calling upon the driver to stop, he drew his revolver, but the motorist increased his pace. As the car went past Cutmore fired a warning shot, and then another at the car itself. He swung his cycle round and set off in pursuit. The shooting warned the three police searching the track, and they raced up the cutting to the roadway. Detective Payne, scrambling up a loose patch of ground, slipped and ' slid baclc 20 feet on the line. Over Barbed Wire Fence. Having clambered over a barbed wire fence, Burrows and Murphy reached the roadway together, to see the car approaching. Murphy' s second shot went through the hood, within an inch of the driver's 1 head, and the frightened man brought . the car to a standstill.

He was still shaking in his seat when the police came up and arrested him. Immediately the car stopped, however, his companions had leapt to the roadway and vanished into the rough surrounding country. Detectives Payne and Burrows took up the chase, which led them through rugged bush, across vacant allotments, over barbed wire fences, and into gardens and backyards. Detective Payne almost cornered one man in a fowlyard. With his torch full on the fugitive as he was half-way over a- wire fence, Payne was just about to fire when the torch gave out, the shot missed and the man away. Police then lost their quarry, but three-quarters of an hour later, Constable Miller, of Como, arrested a man near the Como railway bndge. The Western suburbs wireless patrol, under Detective-Sergeant Higgins, searched for the third man without succeSs, the rough nature of the country providing a fugitive with many hiding places. Later in the morning the trail led to Leichhardt. A search was also conducted in several houses in Sutherland. In the car were found sides ot bacon, a crate of tinned fish, and a fiOlh chest of tea.