BRUTAL ASSAULT ON A LADY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 314, 14 June 1915, Page 4

BRUTAL ASSAULT ON A LADY.

RUFFIAN ESCAPES. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Auckland, Last Night. On Friday night a brutal assault upon a young lady was perpetrated by some ruffian in Mokoia Road, Birkenhead, which is a fairly well frequented thoroughfare. A young lady, who was engaged in business, locked up the store in which she was employed at 9 p.m.. as usual 0 n Friday nights, and was proceeding along Mokoia Road on her homeward journey, when she noticed a man on the footpath, but whether he was standing or walking she was not sure. The next moment, without the slightest warning, the nmn's fist shot out, delivering a powerful blow on her face, and knocking her down on the footpath. This he followed up while she was on the ground by striking her several times on the head and behind the ear, which was cut. Hearing violent screams, a resident close by opened his door, and the young lady fell into his wife's arms, bleeding from the nose and mouth, in a semi-conscious and hysterical condition, calling "Mother, mother, mother!" though her maternal relative was a hundred miles away. The lady who came to the rescue washed the blood from the victim's head and face, with the assistance of another neigbor, and accompanied her along the road, after she had partly recovered from the shock, to the abode of the friends with whom she is living. Her parents reside in Waikato. The young lady, when admitted to the house of the resident near the scene of the outrage, Was clutching the keys of the shop in one hand and a £1 noto in the other. She remembered nothing after the first blow beyond a hazy idea that she felt the man's hands feeling about her body as if in search of the nights takings or the keys, and she is inclined to attribute the motive of the assault to an attempt at robbery.