“Beatles” Disrupt Traffic

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30399, 25 March 1964, Page 3

“Beatles” Disrupt Traffic

(N.Z. Press Association) HASTINGS, March 24. Members of a gang known as the “Beatles” and four other youths were convicted on , charges of disorderly behaviour by Mr W. A. Harlow, S.M., in the Hastings Magistrate's Court today. The beatles —Charles Frank Akurangi, aged 22, a workman, of Bridge Pa; Walter Haru Harrison, aged 19, a workman, Fernhill; James Rone Harrison, aged 21, a workman, Fernhill; Joseph Francis Karaitiana, aged 18, a workman, of Fernhill; Maurice Karaitiana, aged 19, a workman, of Haumoana; Victor Dennis Eden, aged 18, a factory hand, of Fernhill; and George Thomas Tareha, aged 19, a workman, of Fernhill—pleaded guilty. Akuraingi and Walter Harrison, were each fined £2O, and the others were fined £l5. The four Hastings youths who were involved in the fight with the gang pleaded not guilty, and were repre-

sented by Mr A. G. T. Wane. James Clifford Anderson, aged 19, an apprentice joiner, Hastings, and Michael Bernard Scott, aged 21, salesmandriver, Hastings, were each fined £2O.

Their companions, Robin Wayne Golding, aged 19, an apprentice mechanic, of Hastings, and John Brian Jordan, aged 22, a workman, of Hastings, were each fined £l5. Senior-Sergeant J. R. Adams said that for several weeks the police had been receiving reports that a group of Maoris calling themselves the “Beatles” had been attacking smaller groups of youths, jostling pedestrians on the footpaths and generally causing disturbances in Hastings. Anderson and Scott had previously been attacked, and when Anderson saw Akurangi and Walter Harrison, said to be leaders of the gang, in Heretaunga street on Friday night, he walked over to them and said:— “If you are the •Beatles,’ leave me and my friends alone.”

Akurangi and Harrison told Anderson and Scott to come round the corner for a fight and at the same time sent word to the other defendants, who were playing billiards, to wait in an alleyway. Anderson and his friends offered to fight them in the railway yards down Russell street, but they refused. When a fight started between Anderson and Akurangi,, the other five came out of the alleyway and joined in. Scott, Golding and Jordan were forced to go to Anderson’s aid in an attempt to break the fight- up.

The combatants rolled off the footpath on to the road, disrupting traffic. The fight was broken up by the arrival of the police. Fining the “Beatles,” the Magistrate said: We are not going to tolerate this sort of thing in Hastings. “You will be fined on this occasion but if you offend again, you will serve a sentence of some kind.”