COMMITTED FOR SENTENCE

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25713, 27 January 1949, Page 3

COMMITTED FOR SENTENCE

CHARGE OF ASSAULT AGAINST PORTER Trevor Antrim O'Hagan, aged 40, a railway porter, appeared in the Magistrate’s Court, Lyttelton, yesterday, before Mr- Rex C. Abernethy. S.M., on a charge of having assaulted Alan John Henderson, a railway clerk, so as to do actual bodily harm. Accused was represented by Mr H. W. Hunter. After the evidence for the prosecution had been heard, O’Hagan pleaded guilty. He was committed to the Supreme Court for sentence, bail being fixed at £lOO in accused’s own recognisance, with one surety of £lOO. Alan John Henderson, a shipping clerk employed by the Railway Department, said in evidence that he knew the accused. On the evening of December 15, witness was working in an office when the accused brought in three shipping notes. One of them had not been completed. Witness asked the accused why it had not been completed. The next thing witness knew was that he was being attended to by a doctor. Witness was then lying on the floor of the office. He was in hospital for four weeks and two days. He had never had any arguments with the accused previously. Cross-examined, witness said he was not annoyed about the item being missed. He did not use the word “wog” to the accused. . , „ J Evidence that Henderson had suffered from a depressed fracture of the skull was given bv Dr. P. A. M. Heath, of Lvttelton, and Dr. R. C. Taylor, of the Christchurch Public Hospital. Patrick Hector Bambrough, a raiilway clerk, said he was with the witness Henderson when O’Hagan asked Henderson for a shipping card. Henderson asked O’Hagan why he had not brought it earlier. The accused replied that the goods train had just arrived. Henderson told the accused that in any case he should have brought the card earlier. The accused "got a bit hot’’ and said he knew his job. Henderson told O’Hagan to "go and' get his head read.” The accused turned to walk away and then picked

up a broom. He turned round and struck Henderson on the back of his head with the head of the broom. Constable John Rutherford said ne took O’Hagan to the shipping office. He there saw a young man. whom he now knew as Alan Henderson, lying on the floor. There was a pool of blood near his head. The accused admitted to the witness that the broom, produced in Court, was the weapon with which he had struck Henderson. O’Hagan said that he had not had any previous argument with Henderson. . . . Sergeant L. P. Ricketts produced a statement made by O’Hagan at the Lyttelton Police Station. O’Hagan sated that among his duties was the meeting or goods trains, and the taking of the waybills to the shipping office.