Hotel incident ends in Court

Press, 7 March 1978, Page 4

Hotel incident ends in Court

In an attempt to get revenge for an alleged assault on a friend, ..four men attacked 10 Polynesians in the car park of the Star and Garter Hotel with an umbrella spike, a crank handle, a tack hammer, and a bumper jack, the Magistrate’s Court was told yesterday.

Each of the men was convicted on charges of being part of an unlawful assembly and being armed with offensive weapons without lawful excuse. Barry Kiwha Kiwha Williams, aged 20, unemployed, Sonny Albert Bush, aged 25, an unemployed machine operator, and Robin Dallas Mathews, aged 26, an unemployed labourer, each pleaded guilty to the charges. Stanley Selwyn Kuka, aged 24, a cable layer, pleaded guilty to the unlawful assembly charge but denied possessing an offensive weapon without lawful excuse. He was convicted after a defended hearing. Mathews was also convicted on a charge of unlawfully taking a motor car. He pleaded guilty to this. Mr B. A. Palmer, S.M., remanded each man in custody to March 13 for probation reports and sentence. Sergeant B. N. Thompson said that a fight developed in the car park of the hotel about 10.30 p.m. on Wednesday, January 18. Bush had an altercation with another person while leaving the hotel and enlisted the help of the other three defendants before finding the Polynesians and starting a fight. They had gone back to the hotel to seek revenge for the assault alleged by Bush. Bush had armed himself with a sun-umbrella spike, which he later admitted using on someone in the fight.

Williams had a baseball bat and hit a Polynesion person over the head until he was brought to his knees, said Sergeant Thompson. Mathews had admitted using a crank handle to bring someone to the ground. A man who had been a patron at the hotel on the night of the fight said during Kuka’s defended hearing that he saw the defendant carrying an orange bumper jack and “laying into” a person. Kuka said that he and his companions had walked through the public bar of the hotel looking for some “Samoan jokers.” He denied having been armed with any weapon. “I thought it would be just a straight-out fist fight,” he said.