Three youths for trial on robbery charge

Press, 7 April 1984, Page 4

Three youths for trial on robbery charge

Three teenage defendants, in the District Court yesterday, were committed for trial by jury in the High Court on a charge of robbing two university students.

They were said in evidence to have followed and overtaken the students’ car, causing it to stop. Assaults on the students then allegedly took place and items worth $167 were taken. The defendants were William Alfred Boulton, aged 19, a rubbish collector (Mr E. Bedo); Francis Brian Hanrahan, aged 17, unemployed (Mr M. J. Glue); and a youth, aged 16 (Mr T. W. Fournier).

They were jointly charged with robbing Ben Zinzan Harris and Peter Norman Tolmie Haggitt of $2.30 in cash and a silver bracelet and a watch, to a total value of $167, on February 18.

After hearing depositions of evidence of prosecution witnesses, Messrs R. C. Holland and J. B. Graham, Justices of the Peace, held there was sufficient evidence to commit all three for trial.

They remanded them to May 14, pending a date for trial in the High Court. All three were granted bail, but a curfew, imposed previously on the youngest defendent was continued. He is to remain at home between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m.

each night. Senior-Sergeant R. A. Cook prosecuted. Evidence was given that about 1.10 a.m. on Saturday, February 18, Mr Harris, accompanied by Mr Haggitt, was driving in Traffers Road, Wigram, and passed a red station waggon with two or three persons standing beside it. One ran on to the roadway and tried to kick their car. They turned into Wigram Road and then saw a vehicle following them. As it approached to Im behind them, they saw it was the station waggon they had passed. The station waggon passed them and stopped in the middle of the road, and a person alighted, ran towards the complainants’ car and threw a beer bottle as the car was reversed away. The bottle shattered on the roadway near the car. The two complainants gave evidence of the involvement of the three youths whom they identified in court.

They gave evidence of being struck about the face, and money, bracelet and watch taken from them. Mr Harris said he suffered bruises to his face, a small abrasion near the right eye, and a sore jaw and stomach in the attack. Mr Haggitt’s injuries comprised bruising to the face and body, and scratches on his neck.

To questioning by Detective J. D. White, or in written statements made to him the three defendants allegedly admitted involvement in the matter.

The 16-year-old defendant, in a written statement, said he had been driving his brother’s station waggon; two other persons, whom he did not wish to name, were occupants. They saw a car in Traffers Road which they had seen earlier in Clyde Road, and one of his companions suggested they “get them.”

He drove after and overtook the car in Traffers Road and went over to it, after his companions. He told them to “ease off.” He said he did not take any money or property. He told the two in the car to walk up the road and keep on walking. Boulton said when questioned by the detective that they had thought the car had followed them from Clyde Road.

After the car had been stopped a bottle was thrown at it to scare the occupants, and they were punched and “laid into,” and asked why they had followed their station waggon from Clyde Road. Boulton told the detective that, after Hanrahan had hit one of the men, he remembered the men walking along the road. He said that he fell asleep in the station waggon and was dropped off home at 3 a.m.

Boulton said that a beer bottle was thrown at the car. He got some money from the persons in the car but gave it to Hanrahan. It was 50c at the most.

Hanrahan, in a written statement, said the three left a party and noticed the other car in Clyde Road and again in Traffers Road. They overtook it and their driver (the youngest defendant) stopped in the middle, of the road, and the car stopped. He said that he followed his companions to the car and carried a knife which had been in their station waggon. He had it because he thought it “would be safer with me.” The driver was beaten beside the car by the youngest defendant and he told this defendent to “get off him.”