Upset driver hit motorist

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33750, 24 January 1975, Page 2

Upset driver hit motorist

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, January 23. An Auckland Regional Authority bus-driver who leapt from his bus to punch the driver of an adjacent car was today convicted of assault when he appeared in the Auckland Magistrate’s Court.

Frank Kolani Tasi, aged 24, had pleaded not guilty before Mr D. I. N. Maclean, S.M., to assaulting Grant John McDonnell on Saturday, November 16 last year. He was disqualified from driving for one year and remanded on bail until February 7 for a probation report and sentence. The Magistrate refused a request from Tasi’s counsel, Mr M. C. Mitchell, to delay the imposition of the disqualification. Mr McDonnell said that about 9.10 p.m. on November 16 he and three passengers had pulled up in his car at the traffic lights on the intersection of Market Road and Great South Road. An A.R.A. bus had been in the right-hand lane beside them, and as they moved away, the bus had pulled in front of him. BE4TEN He had braked, changed lanes, and overtaken the bus, stopping again at the lights at the next comer. "I stopped at the tights, the bus pulled up beside me, and the next thing I knew I was getting beaten in the head,” Mr McDonnell said. When the bus stopped at the lights beside him, he had seen the driver come running down the steps. “He grabbed me by the jacket, pulled me toward the window, and punched me in the head twice. OUT 20SEC “He knocked me right out. I was lying across the seat, and I did not get a good look at him. I was unconciousr for about 10 to 20 seconds.” , When he regained consciousness, Mr McDonnell said, he had driven in pursuit of the bus, and some

of his passengers had taken its number.

They had then been stopped by a traffic officer and escorted to the Newmarket Police Station where a complaint was laid. Other passengers in the car also gave their account of the incident. “FINGERS" Tasi told the Court that he went to pull away from the lights, saw a car in his rear vision mirror, and stopped. One of the people in the car "gave me the fingers,” he said, but he ignored it. “They then gave me the fingers all the way down,” he said "and this car tried cutting me off." He said he saw a beer bottle being held on the outside of the car. Tasi said that at the next lights he held on to the rail of the bus, and leaned over trying to tell the occupants of the car they should "show respect” as he had ladies as passengers. The driver, he said, grabbed his shirt, and he pushed him away with an open hand, got back in the bus and closed the doors. “NO BEER”

The passengers of the car, said Tasi, then got out of the car and tried to smash his door, using bad language. The lights went green, so he “took off.” He said he saw the car travelling at high speed, and it was chased and stopped by a traffic officer.

In finding the charge proved, the Magistrate said he was satisfied Tasi had lost his temper, although there was "no provocation, apart from a slight provocation in the first instance.” He was satisfied, he said, that there were no beer bottles involved. Sergeant D. W. Somerville appeared for the police.