Borstal for boy who derailed train

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34046, 9 January 1976, Page 2

Borstal for boy who derailed train

(N.Z. Press Association) GISBORNE. Jan. 8. About $50,000 worth of damage was done to a Gisborne-bound goods train last month after a 15-year-old boy derailed it with iron, concrete, and a railway sleeper he had put between the rails, Mr W. M. Willis, S.M., was told today. The boy was sentenced to Borstal training on each of two charges arising from the derailment when he appeared in the Gisborne Magistrate’s Court for sentence. The Magistrate said his hands were tied, and that he had no alternative but to send the youth back to Borstal. The youth is already

serving a Borstal term for earlier offences of burglary. Because of these earlier burglary charges, heard in the Children and Young Persons Court, it would not be right to allow publication of the boy’s name, because the two instances had been linked, the Magistrate said. • Normally, where a boy of i 15 had been remanded to the Magistrate’s Court for sentence, he would see no reason why the name should not I be published, he said. It was not that the boy did not de- ' serve to have his name published. The police had been called [at 11.30 p.m. on December 9, Ito where a locomotive and a rake of waggons had been derailed west of Stanley Road, Senior-Sergeant K. J. Morrow told the court. Inquiries at the scene showed the derailment had been caused deliberately, by a 10ft sleeper and iron on the line. I The police found that earlier, at 8.45 p.m.. a lump of (concrete had been struck by la southbound train. The derailed locomotive and eight waggons that left

! the track disrupted goods and passenger services; and the crew had been lucky to escape injury’, Senior-Sergeant Morrow said. The Magistrate said he could not understand why the boy had put the objects on Ithe line. It must have been ito derail the train — but it : would not have taken much (thought to realise that someione might have been killed. Counsel for the boy, Mr [S. T. Crosby, said there had (been considerable speculation that, the derailment had not i been the work of one person. I This was the theory of railwaymen and engineers, which had concerned him — but after police investigation, and the boy’s own frank admission, it appeared that it was his own work, a feat of considerable strength. Mr Crosby said the 10ft length of timber was not a sleeper but more like a heavy section of post. By changing his previous pleas of not guilty' the boy had at least, saved the Crown I from considerable further ex- ' pense.