CONFLICTING EVIDENCE

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1081, 19 September 1930, Page 10

CONFLICTING EVIDENCE

INQUEST ON MAN KILLED BY MOTOR-CAR WAS WOMAN IN VEHICLE? l t rcss Association WELLINGTON, Today. There was a dramatic development at an inquest yesterday on a man who was knocked down and killed by a motor-car. The driver, Victor Brownson on going into the box flatly contradicted the evidence of a witness, J. E. Watts, who had sworn that there was a woman in the car and that after the accident, she had got out and disappeared on his i Brownson s) advice. The coroner, in returning an open verdict, remarked that Watts’s evidence was too detailed and circumstantial to be dismissed as a mistake. The victim was Henry Jones, a single man, aged 57. The accident occurred at the corner of Ghuznee Street and Cuba Street at about 10.30 on the evening of September 2. In endeavouring, according to his own story, to avoid a man who was crossing the street, the driver of the car, Brownson, a jeweller, of Wellington, swerved and mounted the footpath, running into the window of Hallenstein Bros., Ltd. Jones, who was standing talking to some friends, was knocked against the window. He received severe injuries and was taken to hospital, where he subsequently died. The inquest was presided over by Mr. J. S. Barton. S.M., the coroner, who said his finding was that Jones died in the Wellington Hospital following shock and injury received by him on September 2 when he was knocked against a shop window by a motor-car then in control of the owner, Victor Brownson. There was a conflict of evidence, said the coroner, as to how Brownson was controlling the car at the time. He accepted the evidence of the witness Watts as true, namely, that there was a woman in the car, and that when witness reached the car immediately after the accident she was in the driver’s seat, but promptly got out and went away. All the contrary evidence of independent witnesses, he added, was merely negative. They could not see the second occupant. Watts’s evidence was too detailed and circumstanial to be dismissed as a mistake. “In my he added, “it is corroborated strongly by the demeanour in the witness-box of the witness Otterson, who admits that on September 9 he told the police he had seen a woman sitting next to the driver, and that she then got out and hurried away, but who stated today that he wished to contradict it.”