SUPREME COURT Man guilty of car offence

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32730, 6 October 1971, Page 19

SUPREME COURT Man guilty of car offence

Owen Stanley Watt, agedi 25, a pipe-layer, was found guilty by a jury in the Supreme Court yesterday on al charge of unlawfully getting into a car; and was found not guilty on a similar charge. Mr Justice Roper remanded Watt in custody to October 8 for sentence and told the jury that Watt had a long list of previous convictions, and that he would have reached the same verdicts as the jury. Mr G. K. Panckhurst appeared for the Crown and Mr C. A. McVeigh for the accused.

His Honour discharged Watt on a charge of unlawfully interfering with a car in the yard of Blackwell Motors, Ltd, and on two alternative charges of unlawfully taking two cars, because of insuffiicent evidence for the charges to go to the jury.

Evidence was given that a car valued at about $2OO, the property of Wilfred George Hopwood, a glass sorter, was unlawfully taken from the park at the Crown Crystal Ltd, factory and that a car valued at $l6OO was unlawfully taken from the yard of Blackwell Motors, Ltd, at Hornby. Both offences were committed on the night of April 15.

Detective William James Gilmour, of Lyttelton, said that at 11.30 p.m. on April 15 he was in a police car in Ferry Road when he stopped the car which had been unlawfully taken from Blackwell Motors, Ltd. It was driven by Anthony Arnold Hawkins, who was now a prison inmate and contained five passengers, one of whom was the accused. At the Central Police Station he told the accused that the car in which he had been travelling had been

i unlawfully taken and that another car which had been unlawfully taken the same I night had' been abandoned at Blackwell Motors, Ltd, at Hornby. "The accused strongly denied being involved in these offences and stated that he had been drinking at Tattersals Hotel for most of the night. He had left the hotel about 10.5 p.m. and had been given a lift in the car which had been stopped in Ferry Road. “I asked the accused if he had any idea that the car was stolen and he said he had a fair idea because the passenger’s quarterlight window was smashed and he knew the driver,” Detective Gilmour said. When shown a statement made by Hawkins he said that it was a pack of lies, said Detective Gilmour.