FALSE STATEMENT

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 113, 6 February 1937, Page 10

FALSE STATEMENT

Police Search For Car Not Lost An attempt to avoid telling the owner of a car he had borrowed that it had been damaged, ended in the borrower being charged in the Magistrate’s Court, Wellington, yesterday, with falsely informing the police that it had been stolen. Defendant, Leslie Charles Burke, hairdresser, admitted the offence and was ordered by Mr. E. D. Mosley, S.M., to pay witnesses’ expenses £3/12/-, and court costs 13/-. Sub-Inspector J. A. Dempsey said the owner of the car, Douglas Robert Latimer, lent it to defendant. He was lawfully in possession of it and had a right to drive to the Wairarapa, which he set out to do. On the journey, however, there were two accidents. Defendant placed the ear, which had received some damage, in Kensington Street, and told the owner that it had been stolen from Mercer Street. Defendant and the owner went to the Mount Cook Police Station and reported the theft. Two days later defendant informed a constable that the car had not been stolen but had been left by him in the street. Defendant said that his object in telling Latimer that the car had been stolen was to avoid trouble for Latimer and, particularly, Latimer's friends. When the magistrate remarked that he had caused the police a lot of trouble defendant replied that he had informed the police of the truth by telephone a quarter of an hour after he and Latimer had called at the station, but Mr. Dempsey said the police had no record of that. Stating that defendant was liable to three months’ imprisonment or a fine, the magistrate said that he would remit the fine because of the heaviness of the witness’s expenses, the owner of the car having come from Huntly for the hearing.