TYRES SLASHED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 212, 8 September 1930, Page 9

TYRES SLASHED.

MALICIOUS DAMAGE.

SEVEN LORRIES IN GARAGE.

DISCOVERY BY EMPLOYEE.

OWNERS EN'OW NO MOTIVE

Twenty-nine tyres flat! That was what one of the emplovees of Messrs. Newdick Brothers, Ltd, butter "and produce merchants,. Great North Road, discovered about seven o'clock yesterday morning as he was passing through the yard near to the garages. He was going to catch a horse in an adjoining paddock when he noticed one of the tyres down. On investigation he discovered that.all the tyres of seven oat of the seventeen trucks had been punctured, and also one spare. Some sharp instrument had been used with an edge of about half an inch. Some of the trucks are two tons in weight and the covers are correspondingly heavy. The instrument would have had to be hammered through almost an inch of covering. Mr. A. Newdick has no idea who did the damage. When he saw the trucks, about sis o'clock on Saturday night, they were intact. Nothing except the tyres was touched, ihe engines were not tampered with. Three of the four garages are without doors, and one of them is big enough for sis vans and another for five. Those near the front of the buildings, near the light, were not touched. The damage was confined to those at the rear of the garage, where it was dark, and where the flat tyres would not be seen if a cursory examination were made. In the largest garage the trucks were packed two in a row and three deep, fairly close together, so it woukKtake some time for the marauder to do his work. He must have known he would not be disturbed. The garages are some 73 yards from the house.

One of the spare covers had never been used, and had an outside cover on

it. That cover was slashed three times in an endeavour to find the tyre. The third shot was successful. All the punctures were made at the same place, about two inches from the rim. While the hole in the tyre was not very big, the outward rush of some 001b of air tore a good-sized hole in the inner tube. It took" the drivers of the vans and the firm who supplied the tyres all yesterdav afternoon to repair the damage.

"I have no enemies," said llr.- Xewdick, '"'and, anyhow, what a puerile sort of a thing to" do! Jabbing something through the tyres does me no harm. It's the drivers' of the trucks who have to do the repair work. The whole thing is inexplicable/ 3