WAS PATIENT KICKED, OR HURT IN FIGHT?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 536, 13 December 1928, Page 13

WAS PATIENT KICKED, OR HURT IN FIGHT?

COURT STORIES DIFFER MENTAL HOME INCIDENT Prats Association WELI-INGTON, Wednesday. “You Have sworn to tell the truth end nothing but the truth. If you do not give the truth consequence* may follow/’ Mr. E. Page, S.M., thus warned a witness, William Moseley, when the hearing of the charge against Henry Dixon Tyrer, an attendant at the Porirua Mental Hospital, of causing bodily harm to a patient. Counsel intimated that Tyrer will plead not guilty. A junior attendant, Walter Patterson Quintall. gave evidence corroborating lu iiy complainant’s story Ho was in the room while the assault took place, but had not interfered further than to the man had had enough. Witness said that, at accused’s instigation, he had agreed to a concocted story of a tight having taken place between the patients, and had signed accident forms to this effect, but witness said they were not true. Dr. Macky, of the hospital staff, who examined the patient, said he would believe his story as his word could be relied on. William Moseley, an attendant at the hospital, maintained that the patient was injured in a fight with another patient and when on the ground was kicked by a third patient. Witness did not know why he had not mentioned it in his statement to the detective. It was at this stage that the magistrate warned Mo«ley about telling the truth. Witness then admitted that the statement he made to the detective was wrong. He had seen the patient concerned fighting with another patient, and had seen them down on the ground but did not take much notice of the tight at the time. The Magistrate: Witness, I will give you one more opportunity to tell the truth. I want the truth to-day. You say that you saw a fight going on in the yard, and that the report you put in was true. Is that so? Witness: Yes. The case was adjourned until Wednesday next, bail being refused. At a special Magistrate’s Court opened t the Porirua Mental Hospital on December 5, the patient related the story *•£ having broken the window of a room in which accused slept. Accused said that witness should be made to clean up the glass or he would make him. Then in the presence of another attendant, the patient, said accusal threw him down and kicked him a number of times '•n the floor, afterwards picking him up nnd punching him. then dancing upon him with hla hoots.