THEFT OF SUITCASES

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 70, 15 December 1939, Page 3

THEFT OF SUITCASES

Incident At Y.M.C.A. Pleading guilty to the then of two suitcas’es and contents valued at £lO, the property of Edward Keith McLeod, Robert Bruce MeKinlay. labourer, aged 38, and Frederick Alexander McCarthy, miner, aged 46, appeared before Mr. Stout. S.M.. in the Magistrates' Court. Wellington, yesterday. MeKinlay wa« sentenced to six months' imprisonment, with hard labour, and McCarthy, who was described as a native of San Francisco, was placed on probation for six months on condition that he took the first ship back to the United States. Sub-Inspector E. T. C. Turner, who prosecuted, said that at 10 p.m. on November IS, the two accused went into the Y.MC.A. building in Willis Street am asked for beds. The clerk on duty iouml they bad only 2/-. so refused them Attei they had gone he discovered that the two suiteases, which had been standing in the lobby, bad disappeared. He went oik into (he street ami saw the two men enter a private hotel carrying (he hags. He returned to the Y.M.C.A. and got in touch will) the police. When they went to the hotel they found MeKinlay and McCarthy in a room with the bags They had opened the bags, and sy ine «> the contents were strewn over the floor. MeKinlay had been out of jml ul !‘- v about a month. He had a formidable Usi of previous convictions, said Sub-luspec-tor Turner. McCarthy had been in New Zealand, about, a year.