ASSAULT BY TWO MEN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20902, 18 June 1931, Page 14

ASSAULT BY TWO MEN.

TOOK LAW INTO OWN HANDS.

;SEQUEL, TO EPISODE AT DANCE,

[from our own correspondent.] HAMILTON. Wednesday.

Two young men, Norman Mills Ferris md Leonard Alexander Andrew, pleaded guilty before Mr. Wyvern Wilson, S.M., in the Hamilton Magistrate's Court today to a charge of assaulting Fritz McPherson Dunn.

Senior-Sergeant Sweeney said the facts wero that at a dance held at Matangi on April 23, Dunn supplied a girl of 17 with liquor and made her intoxicated. Some time later the defendants went to the house of Dunn's employers and called him out. Dunn refused to come out and the two men entered tho house and endeavoured to pull him out. Dunn then ran out and sought refuge in a drain. Ho was pulled out and was so beaten by Andrew that he had to spend several days in hospital. The senior sergeant said the worst feature of the case was the action of the defendants in entering the houso. Mr. A. L. Tompkins said the girl was a relative of Andrew's, and Ferris escorted her to the Matangi dance._ They resented Dunn's action in supplying tho girl with liquor and felt that he merited punishment. They sincerely regretted they had taken tho law into their own hands. The magistrate said Matangi was bocoming notorious for the liquor that was consumed at dances there. Ferris seemed to have been negligent in looking after the young woman at the dance. Weeks afterwards he and Andrew went near to breaking and entering another man's house to deal with Dunn. The two defendants conspired together and took tho law into their own hands in such a way that Dunn had to undergo hospital treatment. It was a case for more than the ordinary penalty. Each defendant was fined £5.