The courts Man brought from Aust. to face charge

Press, 30 September 1977, Page 9

The courts Man brought from Aust. to face charge

A man charged with intending to defraud a city car sales firm of $3300 falsely by representing that a Ford Falcon car was his own unencumbered property was convicted and remanded in custody to October 12 for sentence by Mr B. A. Palmer SM. when he appeared in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday.

Sergeant B. G. Saunders said that in April last year the defendant, lan William Kerr, aged 39, obtained a personal loan of $3OOO from the Invercargill branch of a national finance company. As a security on the loan the defendant had listed 10 items of which the Falcon was the largest. In October last year Kerr ceased making repayments to the firm after having repaid $750. Early this year he had come to Christchurch and contacted Riccarton Car Sales and arranged to sell them the Falcon for $3300. Sergeant Saunders said arrangements had been made for the money to be remitted to Australia and the complainant had even driven Kerr to Christchurch Airport from where he had flown to Sydney. In March the finance company had obtained a repossession order on the Falcon which the car sales firm had since sold. Rather than lose the firm’s goodwill the firm had paid the value of the car to the finance company. Restitution of $3955 was sought by the car firm, said Sergeant Saunders. The defendant was arrested in New South Wales and escorted back to Christchurch by a detective on Sunday. DETAINED MAIL

Richard John Flatman, aged 23, an unemployed truck driver, was remanded to October 12 without plea when he appeared charged with committing an offence against the Post Office Act. Flatman, at the time employed by the Post Office, was charged with wilfully detaining 42 posted articles addressed to various persons In the Christchurch postal tone 2.

The alleged offences oc-

curred between May 23 and June 1. ASSAULT CHARGE

A man was remanded without plea to October 5 when he appeared on a charge of assault. The man, who was granted interim suppression of name, was charged with assaulting his wife on September 28. Before Mr J S.. Bisphan S.M.) PARTS THEFT

Because there was “some connection” between the Christian commitments of David John Higley and the charge he faced of stealing radio parts worth $7891 from his employer, the Magistrate refused to sentence the defendant until he had seen a psychiatric report.

Higley, aged 27, had been employed by Autocrat Radio, Ltd, since January 1975, and since that time components had disappeared. The police searched the defendant’s flat on June 3 this year and found more than 200 radio parts. He was remanded until October 20 for a psychiatric report and sentence. Counsel (Mr S. G. Erber) said Higley had strong religious convictions but these had not been involved in the thefts.

He said the strangest thing about the thefts was the lack of motive. As various items were discarded the defendant took them home over a two-year period. It was a “magpie situation,” he said.

“Nobody had lost anything,” said Mr Erber, “and the employer was not out of pocket one cent.” The defendant also disagreed with the value placed on the components by his employers and Mr Erber illustrated several discrepancies in the employer’s value of parts compared with the listed price. Mr Erber said the defendant was not “even vaguely criminally minded,” and although stealing from an employer was serious the defendant had learnt his lesson and should not be sent to prison.

A fine was the best way of dealing with the matter.