SIX MONTHS' GAOL

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 75, 30 March 1939, Page 15

SIX MONTHS' GAOL

CAR CONVERSION

ACCUSED PLEADS "HANGj "OVER"

"We are both mechanically-minded and we thought it a shame to see the car lying there in that order,", said William Alexander Miller, aged 27, a casing worker, when, with Gerald Gar^ i field Thorns, aged 28, a motor driver, j he was charged in the Magistrate's j Court yesterday with, unlawfully converting a car valu .>ed at £45 which was said to have been standing in Murphy Street for some time. Mr. W. F. Stilwell, S.M., sentenced the accused to six months' imprisonment for i the offence, to which they pleaded guilty, and Thorns was convicted and discharged for stealing 12 gallons of petrol from the, Certified Concrete Company, to. which charge, he .also pleaded guilty. At about ( 10 o'clock on a recent Sunday. morning, said Del;ective-?Sergeant P. Doyje, the. two. men tried to get liquor from the Princess. Hotel but were refused. Outside, the hotel, was a car, which Thorns remarked to Miller had been standing there for several days. It was suggested- that they should see whether .the car,, would go, so Miller, got '.into the,, driving seat, T-homs operated jOn,th ( e,carburettor, and with the, assistance..pf ariother man they pushed it sbme'di"stance'until it started. The car was then • driven around Wadestown, and after Thoms's wife had heard a broadcast description of it as having been unlawfully taken it was abandoned in Tinakori Road. Both the accused were frank when interviewed by Detectives P^. Smeaton and G. Callaghan. The third man implicated had not been located. Thorns owned a car, said the Detec-tive-Sergeant, and. he,, lived,, near the yard in Grant Road used by the Certified .Concrete Company. "On various nights recently,petrol, amounting to. 12 gallons had been ' missed ' from ' the tanks of the company's lorries, and Thorns admitted having siphoned it off. Both the accused had been previously before the Court. Miller explained that he and Thorns had been on a drinking bout and they had a "hangover" when they took the car. They took fully half an hour to get it started in full view of people in the hotel who knew them. "It was our drunkenness and silliness that made us do it," said Miller. He said he took the car for a drive and when he heard about the broadcast message he left it near the Tinakori Road police station. Detective-Sergeant Doyle read a paragraph from Miller's statement to the police, in which Miller said that he, was quite, sober when he was driving the car.

Thorns said that rif they had had any criminal intention they could have taken a good car at night time, instead of an old one in daylight. He asked for probation.