A BRUTAL ASSAULT.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 March 1922, Page 5

A BRUTAL ASSAULT.

BY DRUNKEN MEN. RANGER SEVERELY BATTERED. THEN THROWN IN CREEK. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Te Kuiti, Last Night. Details are to hand of a particularly brutal murderous assault, alleged to have taken place at Kopaki on the night of March IS, when Wm. Thirwell Routledge, ranger to the Auckland Acclimatisation Society, was kicked and battered into unconsciousness, and then thrown in a creek by four men named Herbert Holgate, contractor, Richard Daly, farmer of Kopaki, and Leonard Grundy and Alfred Giover, bush men of Aratoro. It appears the perpetrators of the assault had taken possession of a case of whiskey that afternoon, six bottles being drunk prior to the assault. In a maddened condition they became obsessed with the idea that Routledge, who was a stranger in the district, was a spy in the pay of the police. Routledge, on refusing Holgate’s invitation to drink, was rushed by the four men and dragged out on the road. He was kicked, battered and rendered unconscious, then dragged through two and a half chains of blackberry and thrown in the creek. Revived, by the cold water, he scrambled up the other side and hid in a wood pile. He heard four men looking for him and say he must be dead. He crawled barefooted for two and a half miles to a farm house, where he arrived in a state of collapse, covered with blood. In response to a telephone message, Sergeant Fearnley and Constable Kennedy, accompanied by Dr. Mcßae, went to Kopaki, where the victim was medi eally attended to. He waif then brought to Te Kuiti in a dangerous condition and weak from loss of blood. Holgate and Daly were arrested on the spot and conveyed to the Te Kuiti police station Sergeant Fearnley and Constable Kennedy returned later in the day and arrested Grundy and Glover. At the Magistrate’s Court this morning the four accused were remanded for seven days. It is expected to be a long time before Routledge recovers.