Alpine restaurant burglary denial

Press, 3 December 1982, Page 15

Alpine restaurant burglary denial

A Dunedin man. who is alleged to have been involved with two other men in | the burglary of a mountain | restaurant overlooking I Queenstown in February last year said in evidence at his i trial in the District Court at i Christchurch yesterday that he had not been involved in the burglary and had maintained this throughout in interviews bv detectives.

i The defence case opened I yesterday, the fourth day of I the tria’l of David John ■ McFadyen. aged 28. an unemployed post cutter. He has denied joint . charges of breaking into the ■ Skyline Chalet Restaurant, from which a safe containing ! between $16,000 and $17,000 ■ was said to have been taken. I and of unlawfully taking a Land-Rover from' the Otago Electric Power Board's Roaring Meg power station. The burglary is alleged to have occurred about 2 a m. on February 2. 1981. some half an hour after the restaurant closed for the night. The Crown alleges that the defendant, with two others, drove up the Ben Lomond walking track to the restauI rant in the Land-Rover.

broke into the restaurant and loaded the office safe into the vehicle.

The trial, before Judge Pain and a jury, will continue todav.

Mr W. J. Wright, of Dunedin, is prosecuting, and Mr D. C. Fitzgibbon appears for the defendant. Lionel Edward Hussey, an electronics technician. ’ said he was a lecturer and maintenance technician at the Canterbury Museum planetarium. a’ member of the Royal Astronomical Society and a past president of the Canterbury Astronomical Society. He was called by the defence to give evidence in regard to sunrise times at Queenstown.

A woman resident near the foot of the walking track had given evidence on Tuesday of clearly seeing men coming down the track in a LandRover at 5.45 a.m. on the morning of the alleged burglary. Mr Hussey said his calculations showed that the sun rose in Queenstown on February 2 last year at 6.41 a.m. He ' said "civil" twilight would have commenced half an hour before then, when

the sun was 6 degrees below the horizon. The defendant, in evidence, said he knew nothing about the burglary of the Skyline restaurant and had told detectives throughout, in questioning about the burglary, that he had not been involved. Cross-examined, he said he had not told an interviewing detective that he would not take the rap for the burglary on his own.

He denied telling a detective that he could assist in recovering the safe. He said the detective had twisted everything around to suit himself.

"The things that he said I said were the things he put to me." the defendant said.

He denied telling a detective that he and three others had been involved in the burglary. At no time had he admitted any part in it.

Asked if the woman resident near the foot track had wrongly identified him in her evidence of seeing men in a Land-Rover, he said she must have been mistaken. He said the detectives involved in the case had been on his back for vears.