"YOU'RE A PEST."

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 24, 30 January 1939, Page 9

"YOU'RE A PEST."

COMMENT BY POLICE.

GAOL SENTENCE IMPOSED.

OFFENCES AT »E

Joseph McCarthy was admittedly j drunk on Saturday evening. But he i added considerably to that offence by kicking a man who had spoken to him for begging assistance from a Xewinarket woman shopkeeper, and by an outburst of obscene language. When he appeared in the Police Court to-day the police branded McCarthy as a j>est, and justices of the peace "sent him away to serve three months' imprisonment with tyrd labour. McCarthy was charged with being found druuk in Broadway, with assaulting Thomas Bernard Mooney, and with using obscene language. He pleaded guilty to the first and third charges and not guilty to the second. On the first two he was convicted and discharged, and he was awarded the prison sentence on the third. According to the story told to Messrs. J. B. Paterson and A. J. Stratford, J.F. s, Mooney was in a shop on Broadway when McCarthy entered and apparently tried to beg money from the woman behind the counter. She told him tiiat if he really needed help she would give it to him. Mooney, w lio knew the woman, sug-' geated to McCarthy that there was really no excuse for'an able-bodied man to be begging money these days. "Who the are you?" asked McCarthy, who be -ame rather hostile and left the shop Mooney went away to another shop, but later he saw the woman from the first shop on the footpath. She loked distressed and agitated. McCarthy had been back again. I Police appeared on the scene, having up" McCarthy and brought him to the shop once more. It was while, the affair was being discussed that McCarthy uttered the obscene language and kicked out viciously at Mooney. whose lands were cut in defending himself. The policeman who saw th* aseiuJt said its effects would probably haw been serious if Mooney had not stooped the kirk \iith his hands. Sub-Inspector Fox, prosecuting, said 11ns was the fourth occasion this month on which McCarthy had been befor» the Court for drunkenness. He seemed to nave smarted his career in New Zealand as a ship deserter in IDB7, and be had been before the Court on numerous occasions since then. "A few drinks makes a change in anyone," declared McCarthy in the course of an explanation to the Court. Mr. Fox: Why should decent people be pestered by men like you, hanging nbout in a drunken condition t You're a pest. The Bench: What was his last employment ? Mr. Fox: I think his last employment was six months' gaol, which he served la«t year. He seems to have been busy coming into and out of our hands since then.