A CHRISTCHURCH SENSATION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8407, 23 April 1907, Page 4

A CHRISTCHURCH SENSATION.

By Telegraph—Press Association,

CHRISTCHURCH, April 22. A young man, named Alfred James Gore Hellyer who has been employed in a Christchurch warehouse for some time past, was arrested at Belfast, on Sunday morning, upon a charge of having murdered an illegitimate child, of which he is alleged to ne the father. The mother is a Dunedin girl, who came up to Christchurch, where the child was born. The accused appeared before the .Magistrate, this morning, and , was remanded till the 30th instant. LATER. Hellyer, the young man who was charged with child murder, this morning, was suddenly taken ill, this afternoon, at the police' cells at the Hereford Street depot, whither he had been removed from the Court. It was at once apparent to those in attendance that his condition was grave in the extreme, and Dr. Symes was hastily summoned. He found the prisoner suffering acutely, and in a very grave condition. The symptoms pointed to poisoning, probably with prussic acid. The doctor ordered the patient's removal to the hospital, and a stretcher and an express being ! hastily requisitioned, the patient was conveyed to the institution as \ speedily as possible arriving there a few minutes before 3 o'clock. A careful search of the cell was then made under the direction of Inspector Gillies, and few small fragments of some kind of whitish tabloid were found. Cyanide of potassium is sometimes put up in this form. It is understood that similar tabloids had been noticed in the possession of the prisoner, and he had explained that he used them as a remedy for toothache from which he said he had been suffering. Hellyer died shortly before 8 o'clock, to-night, presumably from poisoning.