FINES TOTAL £2O
MISUSE OF PETROL MAORI’S OFFENCES “PIRATING” ALLEGED Fines totalling £2O and costs amounting to £7 17s (id were imposed on a Maori, Ihaia Richmond, Whatatutu, for a breach of the oil fuel regulations and on two charges of driving a car without a license, when he appeared before Mr. E. L. Walton, S.M., in the Gisborne Magistrate’s Court today. The defendant was fined £lO for purchasing petrol under license for shearing purposes and using it for driving his car. lie was also fined £5 on each of two charges of driving without a license, his driving license having been cancelled a few months previously, following a conviction for being in a stale of intoxication while in charge of a car. Senior-Sergeant J. F. H. Macnamara conducted the prosecution, and Mr. T. S. Wauchop appeared for the accused, who pleaded not guilty to all the charges. Constable W. Greggan said he interviewed the defendant in November, the defendant stating that he was granted a license for 15 gallons in August and one of 22 gallons in September for crutching and shearing, but he did none of that work and used the petrol for his car.
Mr. Wauchop submitted that the deputy oil controller must know that no shearing was done in the district in September but that a good deal of running round was required before shearing started in order to collect the shearing gang.
Witnesses brought to support the charges of driving without a license included Colin P. Bradford, formerly a taxi driver at Whatatutu, who claimed that the defendant had been “pirating." Other witnesses were Hiki Ruru, Hilda Paru, Tom Edwards, and Constable Greggan. Mr. Wauchop said that accused was not well educated and did not appreciate what he was doing in regard to the use of the petrol. His Worship said that the accused made false statements to obtain petrol for the purpose of “pirating" on a taxi driver, and drove after his license had been taken away.
“What can be said for a man who does that?” Mr. Walton asked.
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/GISH19410226.2.48
Bibliographic details
Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20490, 26 February 1941, Page 6
Word Count
346FINES TOTAL £20 Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20490, 26 February 1941, Page 6
Using This Item
The Gisborne Herald Company is the copyright owner for the Gisborne Herald. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of the Gisborne Herald Company. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.