YOUNG MAN CHARGED

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 109, 11 May 1938, Page 13

YOUNG MAN CHARGED

CHASE BY CONSTABLE

MASTERTON OCCURRENCE

An unsuccessful chase by a Masterton constable of a man found on the roof of the building used by the Ranfurly Club in Queen Street, Masterton, was described in the Supreme Court trial yesterday afternoon and today of William George Collie, a labourer, aged 22, who was arrested in a hilliard saloon and charged with breaking and entering the premises by night with intent to steal. The alleged offence occurred early on January 21. Mr. Justice Reed presided, and Mr. H. R. Biss appeared for the prisoner. The Crown Prosecutor (Mr. W. H. Cunningham) told the jury that a constable on his beat early in the morning of January 21 heard a noise in the building of the Ranfurly Club in Queen Street, Masterton, and found that a window had been opened and a door damaged. He picked out a man on the roof with his torch and ordered him to come down. The man paused, then ran for it; he dropped 13ft 6in from-the roof, scrambled over a barbed Wire fence, and evaded capture. While the man was in the light of the torch the constable was able to gain a sufficient impression of his face and clothing to be able to recognise him again. Blood was on a gate over which the man had. climbed and the wire of the fence had been broken.^ The prisoner was arrested in a billiards saloon the same night, and his face showed fairly extensive scratches. Collie explained that he had suffered the injuries the previous night when he fell off a bicycle, but the machine he said he had been riding had no marks of a fall on it. In the prisoner's boarding-house, said Mr. Cunningham, Collie ■ produced the clothes he had been wearing. There was a pair of blood-stained trousers and a cardigan with some drawn threads, and a sleeve-button was missing from a blood-stained shirt. A shirt button with a piece of material attached to it was found near the barbed wire fence. i The contention of Mr. Biss, for the defence, was that the case was one of mistaken identity; that the injuries on the palms, face, and body of the prisoner were consistent with a fall from a bicycle, and that subconsciously the constable, who had had only a momentary glimpse of the man, had gained his main description after the arrest of Collie.

The jury retired at 12.53