AT THE POINT OF A BAYONET.

Otago Witness, Issue 3016, 3 January 1912, Page 36

AT THE POINT OF A BAYONET.

AUCKLAND, December 28. According- to the story told by a young man named Frederick Warren in the Police Court, he had an exciting and distinctly unpleasant experience on the evening of Wednesday week. On his way homo, after spending a few convivial hours with some boon companions, h© called in at a small shop in Albert street, kept ostensibly for the sale of cordials ny a woman named Margaret Dennis. He mad© a purchase, and tendered the woman a one pound not© in. payment. He asked for his change, and she, having ordered him to clear out, turned round, snatched a revolver from the drawer of a bureau, and the next instant ho found himself looking with alarm rather than interest down into the depths of its threatening muzzle. He turned and fled incontinently, but id the f'hop door he was accosted by a man, who struck him, matched at his watcitchain, and hustled him into the street. Warren, who was now thoroughly frightened (as ho fully believed the revolver was loaded), went in search of the nearest policeman, leaving his change in the custody of Miss Dennis. H© found Constable Palmer not very far away, and returned with him to the shop. The man who had assaulted Warren was nowhere to bo eeen, but the woman, after persistent knock!rigs, opened the dcor. The Constable found the revolver in the drawer whence Warren said Miss Dennis had taken it, but the chambers oentainod no cartridges, and apparently tit© Weapon, which was quite new. had never been used, nor even loaded. When the woman entered tho-witness-box sihe gave a very different version of the occurrence. She said that when young Warren came into her place she treated him honourably and fairly, and gave him correct change for his one pound note, but he was not satisfied with that, and demanded the return of the whole ill. She refused to do so, and then he struggled with her, and handled her roughly, bruising her breast badly in his endeavour to iget back his money. Mr A. N. Moodie, who appeared for the woman Dennis, urged that, even i? the complainant’s statement that defendant had presented a revolver at him were true, the fact that the weapon was unloaded was in law a bar to an information alleging assault.—Sub-inspector Hendry replied that if the person at whom the weapon was presented had reason to believe it was loaded the case under th© act was one of assault.—His Worship held that an assault had been committed in terms of the information, and sentenced th© woman Dennis to one month’s imprisonment with hard labour. He, lioweyer, agreed to state a ease for appeal on points of law on the accused entering into a bond to prosecute the appeal.