MAN BADLY BATTERED ON MANGERE BRIDGE

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 22, 18 April 1927, Page 11

MAN BADLY BATTERED ON MANGERE BRIDGE

TWO MEN ARRESTED Upon investigation by a SUN man, the so-called “Startling Affray on Mangere Bridge” may be “bovrilised” down to the ordinary sordid story so frequently occurring in such parts as London, Cardiff, Hull and other seafaring towns on the English coastline. The matter is still under police investigation; but folks outside have something to tell of the event, which has proved exciting. Analysing all “facts and fancies,” the story, feasibly put,'appears thus: At 6 p.m. on Wednesday Mr. and Mrs. Allen, residing on the Mangere side of the bridge, which connects Onehunga with Mangere, heard alarming cries. Upon immediate investigation they found a man lying on the beach with two other men hovering over him. The two men were held up whilst the police were communicated with.

Constable Poll, from the Onehunga Police Station, came along; he succeeded in keeping all parties together, whilst judiciously investigating “their quarrel.” In the interim another traveller in a motor-car had speeded to Onehunga, and laid information as to a man who had been “mercilessly battered about by two other men,” and Senior-Sergeant Cruickshank commandeered the nearest motor-car to convey him to the scene. With Constable Poll he took all three men to the Police Station. As a result of unravelling the tangle two middle-aged men, Roy Morrison and Lawrence Afacey, were charged with having assaulted and robbed John Boyes. Boyes was found to have been badly maltreated, and his injuries were such that the police had to give him immediate first-aid attention. In the subsequent investigation it transpired that the two men had forcibly taken from the assaulted man a dispatch case, found to contain several tins of smoking opium valued at about £3O. Evidence was plainly visible that Boyes’s bag had been forcibly wrenched open; but circumstances apparently justified the police in, later on, preferring a charge against Boyes of being illegally in possession of the opium. The three men have been formally arraigned before an Onehunga Bench of Justices of the Peace, and have been remanded in custody until April 21. Boyes is stated to have been found in a badly injured condition.