COINCIDENCE WAY TO PRISON

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 March 1934, Page 8

COINCIDENCE WAY TO PRISON

STRANGER ASKED FOR A LIFT. LONDON, February 5. In June, 1931, Mr P. Gordon, driving a motor van from London to Southampton, had 1 a, puncture between Basingstoke . and Winchester. A stranger helped with the repairs and said he was an Australian making his way to Southampton to get a ship to Australia. Gordon gave him a li-t and, as he helped with the delivery at Southampton, put him up for the Next morning the man disappeared With £4/10/- belonging to Gordon’s employers. Gordon gave a description of the man to the police, but nothing happened until January 25 this year, When Gordon was in a road house near St. Albans. A fellow driver introduced him to a man who said he was an Australian and wished to get to Tilbury. Mr Gordon, recognising the stranger us the man he helped over two years before, offered him a lift, and at Barnet handed him over to a policeman. As a result, the stranger, Aubrey William Sinnick, 33, a fireman, was at Southampton on Saturday sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for the theft in 1931. - ■ He was said to be a native of the Isle of Wight, and there were previous convictions against him. He was given a further three months for the theft of a bicycle.