A TRUST ABUSED

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 256, 28 July 1927, Page 6

A TRUST ABUSED

RAILWAY PORTER’S THEFTS Dominion Special Service. Palmerston North, July 27. “It is due to every railway officer to protect the property entrusted to his care from loss in transit and from depredation, but here is a case of a railway servant who has abused the trust reposed in him,” remarked Mr. S. L. P. Free, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court to-day, when Walter James Bodie appeared for sentence on two charges of theft, to which he had previously pleaded guilty. The first charge related to the theft of a spotlight valued at £2 from a motor car left in a truck at Palmerston North railway station, and the second to the theft from a vehicle left in the vicinity of the residence of accused, of a motor-car generator and switchboard. The Magistrate stated that the case differed somewhat from the ordinary case of theft, in as much as fhc accused was a railway porter—-a Government servant —who had abused a trust reposed in him. He had carefully considered the question of granting probation, but, in view of all the circumstances, he could not accede to the request of accused’s counsel for such lenient, treatment: He accordingly imposed a sentence of three months’ imprisonment with hard labour on each charge, the terms to be concurrent.