Guilty of Causing Death While Drunk in Charge

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 111, 13 May 1939, Page 5

Guilty of Causing Death While Drunk in Charge

SEQUEL TO FATAL ACCIDENT J’er Press Association. CHRISTCHURCH, Last Night. A verdict of guilty on the indictment of William Jaggar on a charge of causing death while intoxicated in charge of a motor vehicle was returned by a jury in the Supreme Court. The charge against Jaggar was related to an accident on February 15 near the junction of Harper Avenue, Dean’s Avenue and Fendalton Road in which Raymond Henry Fleming was fatally injured when a motor-cycle on which he was a passenger collided with a motor-truck driven by Jaggar. In summing up Mr. Justice Blair said it was the business of a driver to know the faults of the vehicle he was driving. The driver was not entitled to rely as defence on the inefficiency of his brakes r.nd if the accelerator was faulty there were other wavs of reducing speed. The defence invited the jury to say that at 5.10 p.m. the liquor Jaggar had had three hours earlier had not begun to work and that it was not until tho shock of the accident had communicated itself to him that tho dring began to work and made a sober maa drunk. If a man took a sufficient quantity of liquor to affect materially his capacity to drive he was intoxicated. The jury retired at 4.18 p.m. and returned at 6.5 p.m. with a verdict of causing death while intoxicated in charge of a motor vehicle.