Fined £75 After High Speed Chase

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31177, 29 September 1966, Page 3

Fined £75 After High Speed Chase

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, September 28.

Two young men who rode their motorcycles in Point Chevalier road on Saturday night at speed were told by Mr W. S. Meade, S.M., today they were lucky to be alive.

John Scott McQuade, aged 18. tyre repairer, pleaded guilty to a charge of driving at 90 miles an hour in a built-

up area and Murray Frederick King, aged 20, apprentice fittei and turner, pleaded guilty to driving at 85 miles an hour. Both live in Rotorua.

The prosecutor, Leading Traffic Officer W. H. Butler, said a traffic officer on a motor-cycle chased the two youths along Great North road and Point Chevalier road at high speeds at about 10.30 p.m. on Saturday. The officer passed King at 85 m.p.h. and ordered him to stop and continued after McQuade whom he finally caught in a small reserve at the end of the road. He had stopped only feet away from a wire fence at the edge of a cliff above the sea.

The Magistrate told the two that they had shown a completely wanton disregard for the safety of anybody else they may well have encountered on the road.

“You are lucky to be here, the way you jeopardised your own lives,” he said. He convicted and fined each £75,, admitted them to probation for a year and disqualified them from driving for two years and ordered that their licences be endorsed for a further three years. Each was required to dispose of his motor-cycle and have no interest in any other motor vehicle without the consent of the probation officer.