Deliberately Drove Car At Couple On Footpath

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28346, 3 August 1957, Page 14

Deliberately Drove Car At Couple On Footpath

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, August 2. A man who, the police alleged, deliberately drove a car at a couple standing together on a footpath, thinking it was his wife with another man, was sent to gaol for a month by Mr M. C. Astley, S.M., in the Auckland Magistrate’s Court today. Richard Francis Coventry, aged 43, restaurant proprietor, pleaded guilty to charges of dangerous driving and failing to ascertain after an accident whether anyone wafer injured. The Magistrate said Coventry was “fortunate indeed’’ that he was not charged with something much more serious in the criminal sense.

Mr J. W. Overton, police prosecutor, said Coventry and his wife attended a party in« Onehunga, had an argument there, and she left about midnight. Coventry borrowed a car and went looking for her. He s.w two people standing on a footpath and thought it was his wife with another man. He drove the car at them, knocking them down. The couple were his step-daughter and her boy fr: id. They were not injured but they heard the driver laugh, and a step-son who ran out because of the girl’s scream saw Coventry back the car and drive off.

Mr Overton said that when first questioned by police, Coventry had nothing to say, but later said he had only intended frightening the couple and had misjudged his distance to knock them down. Mr J. Kingston, for Coventry,

said it was a stupid and dangerous episode, but Coventry had conceived the idea as a practical joke to drive up to /the couple and stop. He travelled slowly but misjudged, and then, realising his mistake as he backed away, he got confused and drove off. Mr Kingston submitted that financial worries combined with the liquor he had drunk had served to upset Coventry’s sense of proportion.

“Drunken bravado’’ was the mildest way Coventry’s conduct could be described, said the Magistrate. He said he accepted that Coventry intended 'stopping short, but when a man used a car to vent his antagonism on his wife, it became very dangerous. He cancelled Coventry’s driver’s licence ’or three years.