BRUTAL ASSAULT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 127, 31 May 1944, Page 5

BRUTAL ASSAULT

EYE LOST IN BRAWL

°-C. SYDNEY, May 26. Two men who gouged out an Allied serviceman's eye with a broken beer bottle were each sentenced to ten years' gaol at the Sydney Quarter Sessions. "Your behaviour was more like that of wild animals than of human beings," Judge Clancy said to the two men, Alan Kenneth Caban, 25, and Ernest Molloy, 20, both labourers. Caban and Molloy were found guilty of having maliciously wounded Jean Baptist Jeauffredt on March 22 during a party at Paddington. a Sydney suburb. A third man, Keith Kenneth Keillor, 26, arrested with Caban and Molloy on the same charge, absconded from bail.

Jeauffredt said that after the three had had some drink at the party an argument arose, and all the men went outside to fight. He said he was hit with a broken beer bottle. He was savagely kicked by the three men while he lay on the ground. He had lost the sight of his left eye.

Captain Fx-ancis Harris, of the Provost Corps, said that Caban had.served three years in the Army. He was dishonourably discharged after having spent most of the time in and out of detention camps for drunkenness, as« saulting officers, and being absent without leave. He was sentenced to 13 months in the Middle East for being A.W.L. Molloy also had a bad A.W.L. record. In February he was given a year's sentence by the District Courtmartial. While being conveyed from Victoria Barracks to a detention camp he escaped from an Army truck. He was not picked up until the present chni'se was Uiid against him. Caban and Molloy were also charged with having assaulted Sergeant. Blanch, provost officer, and Williem Schubert at. Partdington. on the nieht of Marcr> 22. They vpve vpmfmded.