BOVS’ CONFESSION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 June 1939, Page 9

BOVS’ CONFESSION

ATTEMPT TO IGNITE EXPLOSIONS. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, June 5. A 12-year-old boy, who lives with his parents in New Lynn, has confessed than on Monday afternoon he broke the lock from the explosives magazine at tne local premises of the Amalgamated Brick and Pipe Company, Limited, and made a pile of gelignite and detonators, aggregating 80 lb in weight, with the intention of setting it off. Experts say that, had the boy been successful, the resultant explosion would have shattered every window in the district, and that, had the pile 1 been close to the works, extensive . damage would have been done. Two lucky elements in the inci- ' dent are that, when the boy ran away, the wind blowing across the paddock extinguished the candle that was to ■ ignite the fuse, and that the explosives were 100 yards from the factory walls. Late on Monday evening Constable Boag learned the identity of the boy who had given three other boys some aluminium detonators while they were at a picture theatre. He went to the boy’s nouse and, in a drawer in a chest beside the boy’s bed, he found five detonators. In'the presence of his mother, the boy admitted nis attempt at touching off the explosives, and said that he had given detonators to the other boys. He said he had“used an iron bar to force off the padlock from the brick magazine, which housed the gelignite.