One yearns jail for safebreaker

Press, 23 April 1980, Page 4

One yearns jail for safebreaker

A young Maori safebreaker had had his chances but he had thrown them away, Mr Justice Roper said in the High Court yesterday. Peter Ruhi, aged 20, unemployed, was jailed for a year on two charges of burglary of the Centennial Hall in Lyttelton and the Central Service Station in Worcester Street last August. He was found guilty by a jury on the first charge ar.d pleaded guilty to the other on arraignment. Evidence was given at the trial that a caretaker saw two men “casing” the Centennial Hall on the evening of August 15. He told the police after one attempted to open a window.

Next morning it was found that the office of the Waterfront Credit Union in the hall had been broken into and the safe containing about $l5OO stolen.

Some of the contents of the safe were found in the garden of the residence in Marine Parade where Ruhi was staying. Charred documents were found in the fireplace and other contents of the safe were found in the boot of Ruhi’s car.

Mr K. N. Hampton, for Ruhi, said that his probation report made depressing reading as did his record of convictions. At 20 he had been to Borstal and had served two terms of imprisonment. The only bright note in the drab report was the probation officer’s belief that. Ruhi had tried to stay out of trouble for some months last year. Ruhi had turned out to be a survivor in prison but a failure on the outside, Mr Hampton said. His Honour said that Ruhi was appearing for sentence on two serious burglaries involving the removal of two safes containing $l5OO and $lOOO committed between August 11 and 16, 1979. “You have got a very sympathetic report from the probation officer, Ruhi, and he recommends periodic detention. I note that in an earlier report he said: ‘His

response to periodic detention has been satisfactory’. “Well that was just not the case, Ruhi, because you were admitted to periodic detention in May, 1979, and during the currency of it you committed these two burglaries as well as another for which you have already been sentenced, assault on the police and resisting the police. “It is a tragedy Ruhi. You come from a well-respected Maori family and you have had chances that a lot of young Maori offenders never ever had but you threw them away,” his Honour said. He would take into account that the two present burglaries were committed before Ruhi was sentenced in September, 1979, for burglary, his age and the fact that he had been in custody awaiting trial, said his Honour.