FALSE ALARM OF FIRE

Evening Star, Issue 21719, 14 May 1934, Page 12

FALSE ALARM OF FIRE

MAM FINED £25 |Pim Umited Pr*s« . Amooiutow.J , AUCKLAND, May 14. (t Thoro is no knowing what an otherwise respectable man will do when he has had a few drinks, 1 said the magistrate, Mr Hunt, to-day, u lien he fined Robert Angus Cowley, aged 40, an engineer, £25 or one wonth s imprisonment for wilfully giving a, false alarm of fire on Saturday night. * c cused denied the offence. was given by a man who saw a man push in the glass of a fire alarm box. Ho was positive it was Cowley. Witness said he took notice of the mans action, because be had a brother in the fire brigade and often heard him speak of the difficulty of catching peonlo whs gave false alarms. , The foreman of the brigade said that four malicious false alarms were received between 6.29 and 6.53 on Saturday’, and in the last twelve months there had been eighty-five. Each time an engine timed out it cost nearly £5. The*accused in evidence flatly denied that he gave- the false alarm, but the magistrate said that the evidence on the point was positive. Counsel said that bis client was a man with three children and had been employed by the tramway department since 1918. He was most respectable.