Youths Wrecked Mangere Flat

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31276, 24 January 1967, Page 3

Youths Wrecked Mangere Flat

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, January 23. A police prosecutor described in the Otahuhu Magistrate’s Court today how, on December 23, four youths set about the complete destruction of the Mangere flat in which some of them lived.

Senior-Sergeant L. W. R. O’Neill told Mr H. Rosen, S.M., that one of the youths, Robert William Over, aged 18, an unemployed builder’s labourer, fired a shotgun through a bedroom wall. The shot carried across the next bedroom and destroyed a Venetian blind.

Over and James Rolfe Hall, aged 18, a builder’s labourer, James Robert Cleghorn, aged 18, a builder’s labourer, and a youth who will appear in the Children’s Court, overturned all the furniture in the flat Thrown bottles smashed holes in the walls, and 12 windows were broken. The youths damaged blinds, tore all the light fittings from the ceilings, and dragged the bath from the wall. They broke ail mirrors in the flat, shattered an armchair, broke a fire-screen, and ground dirt, food, glass and broken crockery into the carpets, ruining them. Two carpet runners were cu' up for floor mats in Hall’s car.

Senior-Sergeant O’Neill said a conservative estimate of the: damage was £ll6 Ils 6d—excluding labour costs. Hall pleaded guilty to four charges of theft, one of credit by fraud, one of receiving, three of burglary and two of wilful damage. He pleaded not guilty to two- further charges of theft, and these two charges were withdrawn.

Cleghorn pleaded guilty to a charge of wilful damage. Over admitted three charges of theft, two of wilful damage, one of credit by fraud and one of burglary. The Magistrate convicted the three youths on all charges to which they pleaded guilty and remanded them on bail until February 6 for sentence. . Referring to a second charge of wilful damage laid against Hall, Senior-Sergeant O’Neill said that on December 17 he deliberately smashed two fluorescent lights and a window at the flat. While showing off, he picked up a brass-handled knife and hurled it through one of the walls.