STREET ROBBERY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24776, 28 November 1941, Page 4

STREET ROBBERY

GANGSTER TYPE OF" CRIME ACCUSED'S BAD RECORD (PA) AUCKLAND. Nov. 27. "Fortunately this gangster type of crime is not common in New Zealand, but when it does show itself it requires substantial punishment, and must be stamped out before it begins to grow, said Mr Justice Fair in tha Supreme Court to-day when Victor George Mosen came up for sentence on a charge to which he had pleaded guilty of robbery with violence on October 28, when he robbed Colin Jackson, a message Doy, of a bag containing money and cheques of a total value of £648. Counsel (Mr Meek), pleading for leniency, said Mosen came from a respectable family. He left school at 13 and went milking, later spending two years on a farm in Waitotara Valley. At 18, he eame to town and mixed with bad company, culminating in . a prison sentence. "His was not the brain that formulated this robbery." Mr Meek said. "He. was the tool of otuers. His stupid action'in trying to cash cheques shows he was inexperienced." Mr N. I. Smith, for the Crown, saidthe robbery disclosed premeditation and careful planning. Of the prisoner's alleged share of £BO. all .except 2s had been dissipated in liquor, women, and racehorses. "' '< His Honor said that Mosen had. something of a list, His offences including theft, car conversion; and breaking arid entering. Leniency had been wasted. It seemed that the prisoner had deliberately planned the crime by studying the habits of the messenger. It was possible that he was the originator of the scheme. : On the charge of robbery with violent"; his Honor sentenced Mosen to thrt.: years* imprisonment with hard labour, and on the charges on which the prisoner had previously been admitted to probation he was sentenced to one year's reformative detention,. the sentences to be cumulative.