LYTTELTON NEWS

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27190, 6 November 1953, Page 9

LYTTELTON NEWS

MAGISTRATE’S COURT

Malcolm Edward Barry, who pleaded not guilty in the Magistrate’s Court at Lyttelton to a charge of assaulting Roy Spark on October 10, was convicted and fined £l, with costs. To a charge of quitting a passenger train while the train was in motion he pleaded guilty and was fined £3, with costs. Mr Rex C. Abernethy, S.M., was on the bench.

In evidence Spark, a clerk employed at the Lyttelton railwav station, said that about pan. on October 10 he was standing on the platform watching a Christchurch-bound train pull out of the station. As it was going across the Oxford street crossing a man jumped off and fell to his hands and knees. He went to reprimand the man _ who hit him and knocked him down. “He had had a few drinks," said the witness.

Campbell Gibb Kirk (Mr H. W. Thompson) pleaded not guilty to a charge of assaulting Cornelious Kessels at Lyttelton on September 9. He was fined £2 and ordered to pay costs totalling £l6 19s lOd. In evidence Kessels said that Kirk had attacked him, hittihg him on the chin with his head, ripping his coat, pulling his tie, and hitting him over the head with a poker. The left lapel on the coat had been nearly torn off and the tie had been pulled so tight that it had to be cut to have it removed from about his neck. Kirk, in evidence, claimed that the altercation had been started by Kessels when he had asked Kessels whether he and his wife would stop making a noise in the flat above him. He said he had butted Kessels in the chin when attacked, but had not used a poker. Ronald Barry Cormick. Kenneth Goodyear, Peter Selwyn Mitchell, and Allister White, who did not appear, were each convicted and fined £l, with costs, for being found after hours on the licensed