Wilful damage charges

Press, 5 December 1985, Page 4

Wilful damage charges

PA Palmerston North Two stones and a beer bottle were hurled through the bedroom window of a member of Palmerston North’s Jewish community by a man dressed as a German officer, complete with jackboots and a Nazitype dress ring. When Roger William Key, aged 21, was later apprehended he had demanded that his rights should be read to him in German.

Key, a P.E.P. scheme labourer, pleaded guilty to two charges of wilful damage when he appeared in the District Court at

Palmerston North.

Sergeant I. A. Sutherland told Judge Ryan that after throwing the missiles through the bedroom window, Key, accompanied by three fellow skin-heads, then threw beer bottles through two windows of the city’s unemployed centre. Counsel, Mr F. S. Steedman, said Key belonged to a faction of skin-heads, but the attack on the unemployed centre had occurred before the attack on the bedroom.

“He accepts that he did ask for his rights to be read in German, but he main-

tains he did that as a joke, and that his ‘jackboots’ were a pair of calf-length riding boots,” Mr Steedman said. Convicting Key, the Judge said he was not prepared “to tolerate at all matters which involve other persons’ religious beliefs.”

Key was fined $75 on each charge of wilful damage. For breaking the bedroom window, compensation of $l6O for repair was ordered, and for breaking the two windows at the unemployed centre compensation ordered amounted to $lOOO.