WARNING TO GUNMEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 207, 1 September 1932, Page 20

WARNING TO GUNMEN.

HEAVY PENALTY FOR THREATS

BRITISH JUDGE'S COMMENT.

A warning that judges intended- to deal severely with armed thieves who threatened to kill anyone who Inters fered with them was given by Mr. , Justice Humphreys in the Court Of Criminal Appeal in London last month. The Court dismissed applications for leave to appeal by Richard Philip Elson and Robert Benjamin McKay, who had been sentenced at Exeter Assizes to seven years' and five years' , penal serviji tude respectively for possessing firearms with intent to endanger life, and' to other concurrent terms for garage breaking and assaulting a police officer. Mr. Justice Humphreys said that a constable entered a car which he suspected had been stolen, and Elson pushed a pistol into his side and told him to "Stick them up." Eleon said to McKays ?'lf he starts anything, give it to him." Believing that he was in danger of being killed, the constable obeyed an order to leave the car, which wae driven off, McKay etill covering him with the pistol. Subsequently an automatic and ammunition were found at Elson's lodgings. At the trial it. wae alleged, before sentence was passed, that Elson knew something about post office robberies. Eleon said the police inspector made that allegation because the inspector had evidently heard, wrongly, of course, that when they came out of prison they intended to put that officer "on the spot." That, added his lordship, wae an expression that was sufficiently indicative of the eort of ideas the men had, in mind.