Driver Attacked By “Group Of Thugs”

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31632, 19 March 1968, Page 26

Driver Attacked By “Group Of Thugs”

(New Zealand Press Association)

HAMILTON, March 18.

There was no offence more repulsive than a brutal assault on an individual by “a group of thugs,” Mr T. B. Mooney, S.M., told two young men before him in the Hamilton Magistrate’s Court today.

Joseph Wiki Brown, aged 23, and Kere Wally Meta, 20, had previously pleaded guilty to the joint charge that with intent to injure, they injured a man at Kihikihi. They were further jointly charged that they unlawfully took the man’s car. They pleaded guilty to this charge also. The two incidents took place at Kihikihi on March 7. At a previous court hearing, Sergeant I. Paterson, prosecuting, said the two, with a youth and a girl, met the complainant in a Kihikihi hotel, and after a conversation with him asked him to drive them to a nearby house in his car. The complainant agreed to give them a lift, and when several miles down a side-road near Kihikihi, was attacked by Meta, Brown, and the youth.

He was grabbed round the throat, dragged from the car and hit and kicked. He was left on the roadside while the others made off with his car. They were later apprehended by the police. The Magistrate sentenced Brown to two years’ imprisonment and Meta, because of his age, to borstal training.