MORNING ASSAULT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24253, 21 March 1940, Page 3

MORNING ASSAULT

ASSAILANT NOT IDENTIFIED VICTIM DENIES RECOGNITION Positively denying that the young man in the dock was the one who had assaulted him on the morning of Sunday, January 28, Bertie James Hollow was the complainant in the case heard before Mr J. R. Bartholomew. S.M.. in the City Police Court yesterday in which Robert Ryan was charged with assaulting Hollow. Apart from denying that Ryan was the man who assaulted him. Hollow also said that he had seen neither Ryan nor the actual assailant before. He also denied that he had seen his assailant at the piecart on the morning of the assault, or that his assailant was one of two men whom he had spoken to shortly before he was attacked. Ryan, who was represented by Mr A. G. Neill stated that he, a companion (Raa Vaughan Thomson) and a young girl nad been annoyed by Hollow at the piecart, that Hollow had later spoken abusively to them as they sat in their car in Cumberland street, and that he had later struck the complainant Hollow after he had abused them further, On behalf of Ryan, Mr Neill entered a plea of extreme provocation. Detective Sergeant Hall stated that Hollow had been struck over the mouth and. an artery being cut. had bled so profusely that when admitted to Hospital he had been placed on the dangerously ill list Accused Not Recognised In evidence, Hollow stated that he had been taking some greyhounds for a walk between 5 and 6 a.m. He had spoken to two men with a girl, telling them to leave her alone. He did not know them and could not recognise either of them in court. He had gone down the road after one of the dogs, and on his return a car had passed him and stopped. A man had got out and hit him. He had never seen the man before, and he had probably been mistaken by his assailant for someone else. The man who had hit him was not the man in the dock. To Mr Neill he admitted having been to the piecart. but denied having caused a disturbance. He had taken down the number of the car the men had been in on a matchbox. After Ryan and Thomson had given evidence along the lines of a statement made by Ryan to the police, alleging extreme provocation from Hollow as an excuse for the assault, the magistrate entered a conviction. Ryan being fined £2. " This is not a case of sudden provocation,” commented the magistrate, “ and 1 doubt very much whether the accused would have been troubled by the obscene language used.”