ESCAPE FROM PRISON

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28451, 4 December 1957, Page 16

ESCAPE FROM PRISON

Year Added To Sentence (New Zealand Press Association) PALMERSTON NORTH. Dec. 3. Clifford John Pihema was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment by Mr D. G. Sinclair, S.M, in the Palmerston North Magistrate’s Court today for escaping from the Waikune Prison Farm. He was also sentenced to a years imprisonment on a charge of counting house breaking. Both terms are to be cumulative with his present two-year sentence. On four charges of unlawful conversion, Pihema was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment, to six months’ imorisonment on a theft charge, to three months’ imprisonment on a charge of converting a launch, and to a year's imprisonment on a charge of shop breaking. These terms are concurrent with rhe first two sentences.

Pihema's accomplice in a car conversion charge, Clive John Cavanagh, aged 21. was ordered to

come up for sentence if called on within six month*. Mr A. Caside told the Court that Cavanagh was a victim of circumstances. He was asleep at the time Pihema converted The vehicle, and had evidently accepted the false security of Pihema's companionship. Cavanagh was already on probation for car conversion, and a previous sentence of Borstal training had led to a mental breakdown. Cavanagh had only been released from the mental hospital in June of this year.