‘Sick’ joke played on family

Press, 14 July 1987, Page 3

‘Sick’ joke played on family

Vandals played a poor joke on a Westport family who were staying at the Canterbury-Westland Division of the Cancer Society motels. The McLellan family were staying at the motels in Manchester Street while Mrs Shane McLellan received cancer treatment in Christchurch last week. When they got up on Friday morning to prepare to return to Westport for the week-end they discovered someone had left a fire hose running into their car. Mr Donald McLellan said a window in the car, which had been parked outside the motel, had been forced open and a

nearby fire hose fed through it and left turned on. There was about 12cm of water in the bottom of the car and all the seats were soaked. “I couldn’t believe there were people who would do a thing like that. It’s a pretty sick joke,” Mr McLellan said. He spent the week-end trying to dry the car out, he said. The chief executive of the Canterbury-Westland Division of the Cancer Society, Mr Frank Lowry, said it was a lousy trick to play on a family that was already under pressure.