AN AXE ASSAULT.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 307, 28 December 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

AN AXE ASSAULT.

GOOD SAMARITANS' REWARD. Two Coatbridge (Lanark) men are suffering severely from injuries sustained by acting, as they thought, the part of the good Samaritan toward a man they found quarrelsome and aggresive on the wayside. The circumstances were narrated in the Sheriff Court at Airdrie when Joseph Cree, miner, 232, Sunnyside Road, Coatbridge, was brought before Sheriff Knox on charges of having assaulted (1) Daniel Morton, labourer, 16, Burnbank Crescent, Coatbridge, by striking him a severe blow on his forehead with an axe; (2) assaulting Win. Quinn, labourer, 20, Bredisholm, Ballieston, by similarly assaulting him on the head and committing a breach of the peace. Cree pleaded guilty under provocation. He also admitted having been five times. previously convicted of assault and breach of the peace. The Fiscal said the two men who were assaulted had seen the prisoner in Sunnyside Road, Coatbridge, apparently quar-

relling with other men, and they went forward to help him, and took him home, putting him into his own house and getting him to bed. The men were still in the house when the prisoner suddenly sprang up and, seizing the implement produced (a small hatchet), he attacked both men with it. A struggle ensued in which the' two complainers were severely wounded on the head with the hatchet. Morton received a wound two inches long and a quarter inch deep on the forehead, and a smaller wound, on the left temple. Quinn had also a bad cut on the head. After the assault and the disablement of the two men, prisoner went outside his house and behaved in a wild and disorderly manner. Cree, in answer to the Sheriff, said the two men assaulted had had trouble before, and it seemed they had been on for fighting. They were in the house before he came in and in the struggle between him and them he got hit on the back of the neck with a poker and, of course, he had to protect himself in some wav. The Sheriff said that story was inconsistent with that of the Fiscal. Mr. Henry said the police information was quite clear that the two men brought the prisoner to the house and that he got out of bed and assaulted them. If he did not plead guilty he was prepared to prove the charges. The men were doing the prisoner what they considered a good turn in conveying him home. N Cree said they were in the house when he went in, and his wife, who was in court, could bear that out. The Sheriff said that in any case Cree should not have used the weapon. • He might have murdered the men. On account of his previous convictions there Avas no alternative but to send him to prison for two months.