AMBUSHED AND SHOT

Evening Star, Issue 18158, 26 December 1922, Page 9

AMBUSHED AND SHOT

YOUNG MEN CONVICTED. SEVEN YEARS’ IMPRISONMENT. When Charles Alexander Skinner and a pay clerk with a bag containing £3,400 were travelling in a motor car in the Temora district (Now South Wales) in July, they were ambushed, and Skinner was wounded with pellets from a shot gun. Edwin Stanley Palmer, aged 25 years, and Ernest Victor Smith, aged 25 years, who were convicted at tho Central Criminal Court on a chargo of having maliciously wounded Charles Alexander Skinner at .Mirrool on July 19, were only the other day (six months after tho event) each sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude.

Before the sentences were imposed (says a Sydney journal) Palmer’s father was called. On entering the witness-box ha began sobbing, and was unable to answe" counsel’s questions. Having recovered, he said that his boy had been an excellent son all his life, and witness was prt pmed to enter into sureties up to £SOO, anti it any compensation were necessary he was prepared to provide it. Addressing the father, Mr Acting-Jus-tice Ralston said Personally, I am in sympathy with yon, but crimes of violence have been too prevalent of late, and in- the interests of society a stop must be put to them.” To the convicted men Mr Acting-Jus-tice Ralston said:—“ You arc fortunate that you are not tried on a chargo that involved tho extreme penalty. lam sure, after hearing the evidence, that yon arc g’l.l’y. Had the pellet which is in Skinner’s head travelled a fraction of an inch farther, Skinner would now be dead.”