THEFT OF MEAT

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 163, 26 June 1935, Page 14

THEFT OF MEAT

Labourer Pleads Guilty Pleading guilty to a charge of breaking and entering by night, the butch•r’s shop of Douglas John Martin, Carlyle street, Napier, and i stealing meat and fowls to the value or 23, a labourer, Samuel Smith, aged 40, appeared before Mr J. Miller, S.M., in the Napier Magistrate’s Court yesterday. He was committed to the Supreme Court at Wellington for sentence. Detective-Sergeant H. Nuttall prosecuted on behalf of the police. Smith was not represented by counsel.

Doris Jessie Martin, wife of the comr plainant, a butcher, recalled that on the morning of May 22 last she noticed that the gauze on the shop’s back door had been pulled off and the clamps on the freezer unfastened. Some meat was missing. Mr Martin was away at the time.

Detective-Sergeant Nuttall said in evidence that on June 18 last he interviewed Smith, who admitted the offence. In a statement made to the detective he said he was a single man. He was under the influence of liquor when he broke into the shop. The next day he gave some of the meat to a woman and, on hearing that Constable Kenny was making inquiries, he dumped some more of the stolen meat into the harbour.

Smith entered a plea of guilty after the evidence had been heard and was committed for sentence.