WESTFIELD HOLD-UP.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 65, 14 February 1929, Page 8

WESTFIELD HOLD-UP.

PRISONERS SENTENCED

Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, Feb. 13. When David McKenzie Stewart, aged 27, and Roy Patrick Ivitching, aged 20, appeared in the Supremo Court to-day for sentence for attempted robbery under arms their counsel pleaded for leniency. Mr Cocker, who appeared for Kitching, said that the Westfield hold-up had certain Gilbertian touches. Both prisoners were thoroughly frightened and they allowed several cars to pass before they had courage to hold one up. The shooting was entirely accidental. There was no evidence which would have identified them and if they had brazend it out there would have been no evidence on which to convict. Instead of that they confessed.. Mr Justice Blair: I don’t know about that. The police have a nasty habit of remembering these things. Mr Leary, who appeared for Stewart, said that his client at no time presented a revolver and the offence was really a very foolish prank. “The case is not one in which I can grant probation,” said His Honour. “1 thinfc both men were amateurs in crime and did it more or less on the spur of the moment. But from the point of view of the people held up it was a premeditated attempt at highway robbery. I propose. to give you both terms of reformative detention, but even then I have some doubt as to whether I am not too lenient. You both require a sharp lesson, and I would be failing in my duty if I did not give it to you. You will both he sentenced to one year’s reformative detention and Stewart will serve an extra six months on the other count of obtaining money by false pretences to which he pleaded guilty.”