“Saturday night was a sensational one in Heathcote,” it wrote on 17 August.<\/p>\n
“A further attempt to unlawfully enter Horne’s Beehive Stores was prevented and in an exciting chase which followed, a young man was arrested after being fired at; a few hours later First-Constable Delaney apprehended the occupants of a motor car in suspicious circumstances; he was viciously attacked and felled, but fired several shots at his attackers as they escaped in the car; then followed a motor-car chase halfway to Melbourne; and it was finally discovered that the garage of Elsbury Motors had been broken in to.”<\/p>\n
At 10pm on the Saturday, two of Horne’s employees, Drake and McSweeney, heard a noise in the yard and discovered a man forcing the back door.<\/p>\n
The would-be robber, 19-year old Stanley Hudson, scaled a gate and set off with Drake in hot pursuit.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After Drake fired shots in his direction, Hudson took cover in the blacksmith’s outbuilding where he was apprehended and charged.<\/p>\n Separately to this, Delaney had noticed an unknown car on several occasions throughout the course of the evening.<\/p>\n At 3am he went to investigate when it was parked in the High Street.<\/p>\n While he was speaking to the car’s female occupant, Alma Newton, aged 36, a man, Leslie Newton, aged 39, approached carrying car curtains which he had stolen from Elsbury’s garage.<\/p>\n When Delaney turned to question him, Alma Newton hit the police officer with a heavy object.<\/p>\n Delaney then fired several shots, two of which struck Leslie Newton.<\/p>\n Newton was, however, not seriously wounded and he drove off towards Melbourne, with Delaney, in Mrs Horne’s car, in hot pursuit.<\/p>\n A Melbourne police car took over the chase at Donnybrook, but lost sight of the vehicle.<\/p>\n The Newtons were arrested in Riversdale Road, Auburn, the following day, initially on vagrancy charges.<\/p>\n Along with Stanley Hudson, the pair faced the Heathcote Court in late August on a number of counts.<\/p>\n Hudson was sentenced to six weeks imprisonment on a felony charge, and Leslie and Alma Newton received sentences of three and one months respectively for loitering with intent to commit a felony.<\/p>\n Alma Newton was also charged with assaulting Delaney, but this was later dropped.<\/p>\n Leslie Newton was committed to trial at Bendigo Sessions for having robbed George Elsbury of car curtains valued at \u00a33.<\/p>\n Both the Newtons had several previous convictions, some under the aliases of Lizar and Medhurst.<\/p>\n No evidence of any link between Hudson and the Newtons was in the court reports and it appears it was sheer coincidence that the two events occurred on the same night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A MID-August Saturday night in 1932 saw Heathcote’s customary calm upended when two separate events resulted in gunfire, assault and a 50-mile car chase down the Northern Highway. A week earlier, Horne’s Beehive Stores had been burgled and \u00a340 worth of silks, tobacco and blankets was stolen. Most of these goods were later found stashed […]<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static.timesnewsgroup.com.au\/prod\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2025\/03\/hmt1932clip_69537.jpg\")