FOUR YEARS’ GAOL

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20625, 28 November 1941, Page 7

FOUR YEARS’ GAOL

CITY BAG SNATCHER

MESSENGER ROBBED

COMMENT BY JUDGE

(Per Press Association.)

AUCKLAND, Nov. 27

“Fortunately this gangster type of crime is not common in New Zealand, but when.it does show itself it requires substantial punishment. It must be stamped oUt before it begins to grow,” said Mr. Justice Fair in the Supreme Court to-day when Victor George Mosen came up for sentence on a charge to which he pleaded guilty of robbery with violence on October 28, when he robbed Colin Jackson, a message boy, of a. bag containing money and cheques of a total value of £648. Mr. Meek, in pleading for leniency, said that Mosen came from a respectable family. He left school at 13, went milking and later spent two years on a farm in Waitotara Valley when lie was shepherding. At 18 he came to town and mixed with bad company, culminating in a prison sentence.

“His, was not the brain that formulated this robbery. He is the tools of others,” said counsel. “His stupid action in trying to cash cheques shows that he is inexperienced.”

Mr. N. I. Smith, for the Crown, said tlie robbery disclosed premeditation and careful planning. Of the prisoner’s alleged share of £BO all except 2s had been dissipated on liquor, women and racehorses.

His. Honour said that Mosen had something of a list, car conversion and breaking and entering. Leniency had been wasted. It seemed that the prisoner had deliberately planned the crime by studying the habits of the messenger. It was possible that he was the originator of the scheme. On the charge of robbery with violence, His Honour sentenced Mosen to three years’ imprisonment with hard labour, and on charges, on which the prisoner was previously admitted to probation, he was sentenced to one year’s reformative detention, the sentences to be accumulative.