Police fear that the death of Edwin Rankin Gardner, 27, in the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital yesterday, may be the first episode of a pitiless gang warfare.
Gardner was trapped in a laneway behind a hotel in St. Peters on Saturday evening, and shot down without warning. Four shots were fired into his abdomen and thighs by someone who used a small-calibre revolver. Members of the Newtown-Marrickville Ambulance found him groaning on the ground. Two of the bullets had severed the main arteries of his thighs, and he was nearly dead from loss of blood. Operations, blood transfusions, and the unremitting care of doctors and staff at the hospital, failed to save his life.
Detective-Superintendent Prior, chief of the Criminal Investigation Branch, detailed Detective-Sergeant McRae and other detectives to the task of tracking down Gardner's assailant, but the persistent refusal of the victim to give information practically negatived their inquiries from the start.
It is probable that several people saw the shooting, or were in the immediate vicinity when it occurred, but the police were told nothing. Some men told them bluntly that they would gain nothing by talking, and that they might risk their lives by doing so.
However, detectives and police who know the district, have roughly pieced together the details of a man hunt, which was waged against Gardner by members of the underworld.
Gardner, after being charged recently with firing a fusillade of shots at a man who cowered behind a door in the Park View Hotel, St. Peters, and being discharged for lack of evidence, disappeared from his address in Gowrie-street, St. Peters. His movements were vague for some time, but he was seen on several occasions at St. Peters.
Police believe that he was seeking to avoid some man at this time, but was unable to keep away from his old haunts.
He was evidently seen on one of his visits on Saturday evening and followed into the narrow lane, where he was shot down without any chance of making his escape.
Police have redoubled their search for Gardner's attacker, as they believe his death may be the cause of a further outburst in the underworld.
'Gardner, Edwin Mollison (1907–1936)', Obituaries Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/gardner-edwin-mollison-13642/text24408, accessed 5 November 2024.
18 August,
1936
(aged ~ 29)
Camperdown, Sydney,
New South Wales,
Australia
Includes subject's nationality; their parents' nationality; the countries in which they spent a significant part of their childhood, and their self-identity.