Shop Manager Describes Attack By Intruders

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28415, 23 October 1957, Page 9

Shop Manager Describes Attack By Intruders

How two men he found hiding behind a magazine counter in the Cashel street shop of Whitcombe and Tombs. Ltd., late at night on August 8 attacked him. struck him with a torch and jumped on his face was described by the shop manager, Frank Walter Kelly, in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday when Trevor James Garlick, aged 21, was charged with breaking and entering the premises and committing theft. Garlick, who was represented by Mr B. J. Drake, pleaded not guilty. Messrs L. H. Petrie and L. C. Fulford, Justices of the Peace, committed him for trial in the Supreme Court. When he left the premises at 5.40 p.m. the doors and windows were all locked, Kelly said. He returned at 7.50 p.m. to park his car in the yard before going to the pictures. When he returned to get the car at 10.30 p.m. the gates were still locked but a pair of opera glasses, a tyre gauge and papers which had been in the glove compartment of the car were on the front seat, and a camera was missing. He unlocked the back door of Whitcombe and Tombs’ building and telephoned the police from the packing room. “When the police left after searching the backs of all the shops leading on to the yard I thought I would have a look through our premises.’’ Kelly said. “I switched on the main light circuit and went through the magazine packing department to the ground floor strong-room and then into the shop proper. “I got about eight feet into the shop and looked to the right. Behind the magazine stand two men. a Maori and a pakcha. were crouched down, right under the lights.

"Everybody froze for a while, then I screamed to my wife to get help and I raised my lamp at the pakeha. “Just as I raised the lamp the

Maori said ‘Take it easy, boss.’ As I took my eyes off the pakeha to look at the Maori. I was hit in the eye with a bicycle lamp. “The two men rushed at me and I was thrown on to my back. They kept jumping on my head and shoulders as long as I kept yelling, so I pretended to be out to it. They ran away, and I started to go after them but when they saw me they turned round and came back. I turned round and went through the magazine room door, and put my foot against it while I tried to telephone the police. “I couldn’t get through, and by the time I got to the next tele - > phone I was too shaken to dial, so I went into the yard and met my wife returning with a policeman,” Kelly said. More police arrived later, and he went back into the building [ with them to put on all the lights, I Kelly said. It was found that a window in the dining room on the top floor had been forced from the outside, and that some offices had been ransacked. The Maori, who had not been identified, was' an athletic man about 6ft tall, Kelly said. Evidence was given by Kelly’s wife, Violet Annie Kelly. She said that when she saw Garlick at an identification parade at the Central Police Station she was “doubtful” about him, but had not identified him as the man who had attacked her husband. An unsuccessful attempt to blow open the strongroom door with explosive had been made, said Detective-Sergeant T. Thomson. On September 14 he interviewed the accused at the police station. The accused said that ne did not know anything about the Whitcombe and Tombs “break. ' At an identification parade on September 23, Kelly identified Garlick as one of the men who had attacked him, Detective-Ser-geant Thomson said. After the parade, the accused said, “He took a long time to pick me out.’’i