STOLE BOTTLE OF METHYLATED SPIRITS.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 6 December 1929, Page 8

STOLE BOTTLE OF METHYLATED SPIRITS.

breaking and entering at a MANAKAU STORE. ACCUSED COMMITTED FOR SENTENCE. Having been advised that the store of Mr A. 0. Powell had been broken into the previous night, Constable Bagric, of Levin, visited Manakau yesterday and as a , result arrested a man on* the road who had evidently been on a drinking bout. At the Levin Court this morning, before Messrs 11. J, Richards and T. Brown, J.’sP., the accused, John Ross, a middle-aged man of the wayfaring class, was charged that, on December 4th, he broke and entered the store by night and stole a bottle of methylated spirits valued at 1/-. . . Arthur Owen Powell, an evidence, stated that he locked up his store on Wednesday evening, and at six o’clock everything appeared to be right. At 8 a.m. yesterday, when he opened the store, he found that the back window was smashed and he noticed that things inside had been disturbed a little, and it appeared as though someone had been in A few matches were lying about the floor, both live and dead ones. Witness did no! definitely miss anything from the store. He had a number of bottles of methylated spirit on the shelf and they were all labelled. The bottle produced was from his shop; he identified it by the label. Witness had not sold this bottle to the accused. Constable Bagrie, in his evidence, stated that, in response to a telephone message yesterday, he visited Manakau and made inquiry into a complaint by Mr Powell with reference to his shop having been broken into. He found the window at the back ol: the store, broken, and it appeared as though some person had gone in through the broken window. Witness met the accused walking out of Manakau towards Levin; lie said he was looking for work. Witness brought him to the police station at Levin and questioned him as to where he had been the previous evening. Accused replied that he had slept out under the trees. On searching him, witness found the' bottle ot nietli3'lated spirits in accused’s hip-pocket. Witness asked him where ho had got it, and lie replied that he had found it o.u the side of the road at Manakau. Witness then told accused that he would charge him with having broken and entered the shop and stolen spirit. He replied, “You are not going to send a man back to gaol again?’ ’ This morning accused said! he wished to make a clean breast of it. Witness warned him that anything lie said might be used r,gainst him at his trial. Accused then made the statement. In ins statement to the constable, Ross said that he had been on Hie road looking for work. He airived at Manakau on Wednesday evening; it was raining hard at the time. At ton or eleven o'clock he broke a window in Powell’s shop, r.nd stayed inside the building till daylight. He took a bottle of methylated spirits, but nothing else. He had been drinking for namedays and was the worse for liquor; otherwise he would not have broken into the place. Accused -ipleadod guilty .and , was committed to the Supreme Court at Wellington for sentence.