High Court cellmates fight

Press, 31 July 1986, Page 1

High Court cellmates fight

Fighting broke out in the High Court cells yesterday morning after two men were sentenced for their part in the aggravated armed robbery of $2120 from the Woolworths Supermarket at Bishopdale. The prolonged assault could be heard clearly through the ventilation system in the lawyers’ robing room. Mark Huia Bain, aged

26, was jailed for five years for aggravated robbery and Phillip Edwin Galbraith, aged 22, who was originally charged jointly with Bain on aggravated robbery, was jailed for 15 months on a charge of aiding and abetting in the commission of aggravated robbery. Galbraith was discharged on the aggravated robbery charge after the jury told Mr Justice

Cook that it could not reach a unanimous verdict on that charge after deliberating for several hours. '< '

Bain was sentenced first, and then Galbraith, and they were apparently placed in the same cell. Shortly after, lawyers in the robing room heard a series of obscenities, groans, and sharp intakes of breath. The fight sounded as if it was onesided.

Violent thumping could be heard by people in the corridor below the cells for about two minutes. One woman who was

alarmed by the sounds was told, “It’s nothing to be frightened about. It’s Just the boys having a setto in the cells.”

The' deputy superintendent of Paparua Prison, Mr K. S. G. Chase, said yesterday afternoon that he had not heard anything about the incident apart from the fact that there had been "a bit of a punch-up in the cells.”

Both prisoners were back at Paparua and neither had suffered any great injury, he said. It had been more arm-wav-ing than anything else. Court report, page 4