Fine on firearm charge

Press, 3 July 1985, Page 4

Fine on firearm charge

PA Auckland The police approached a house to be met by a man holding a loaded shotgun, the District Court at Henderson heard on Monday. He told them he had had trouble with gang members earlier in the evening, the police said. Spencer Arthur Samuels, aged 33, admitted a charge of possessing a 12-gauge shotgun without a licence. Sergeant Rod Rees told Judge Satyanand that on September 26, 1984, Samuels had been prohibited from obtaining a firearms licence. The police mistakenly went to his New Lynn house last Saturday after

being called to another house in the street. They were met by Samuels carrying the loaded shotgun. He was asked to unload it but when the police returned later it was still in his possession and the gun and four cartridges were seized. For Samuels, Mrs Jenny Marks said he was host at a birthday party for his daughter, aged eight, when four men arrived at the house with baseball bats and smashed windows and frightened the children. When the police arrived, Samuels was under the misapprehension that the gang members had returned and with six children in the

house he was genuinely concerned, she said. The Judge fined Samuels $lOO, and ordered that the weapon be forfeited.