LYTTELTON ACCIDENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 272, 7 February 1928, Page 1

LYTTELTON ACCIDENT

MEDICAL OPINION FOUL PLAY UNLIKELY Press Association. CHRISTCHURCH, Monday. It has been established to the satisfaction of the police that Charles James Mahan, of Nile Street, Timaru, whose body was found in Lyttelton Harbour on Saturday, was not the victim of foul play. Mahan’s body was found floating in the harbour, and wounds in the head raised a suspicion that Mahan had been injured before his body reached the water on Saturday evening. Hr. T. L. Cooke, Hr. C. H. Upham, and Hr. B. H. Gilmour conducted a post-mortem examination of the body. The consensus of opinion of the doctors was that the wounds were caused by bites from fish, and that death was due to drowning.

At present there are shoals of dogfish in the inner harbour. Mr. S. H. Gilray, night watchman lor the Lyttelton Harbour Board, who discovered the body, said that when he and Mr. S. W. Lane, with the assistance of the ’ police, were attaching arope to the body to take it in tow to the watermen’s steps, dogfish were swimming round them in hundreds. The post-mortem examination revealed that the injuries on the face were very superficial, and could not possibly have been the cause of death. There were no marks of a struggle of any sort, such as bruises on the body. Such information as has become available states that Mahan’s movements until a matter of five minutes or so from the time when he is calculated to have entered the water have been easily -traced. There is nothing in them that would lead to a suspicion of foul play. It is not expected that the verdict of the coroner at the inquest, which will be completed as soon as certain facts are ascertained from Timaru, will express any conviction or theory that there has been foul play. The fact that the body was floating when found suggests that death occurred before immersion in the water, but it is not conclusive evidence on the point.