THIEF WHO WAS A HERO

Stratford Evening Post, Volume I, Issue 434, 6 May 1932, Page 3

THIEF WHO WAS A HERO

CARRIED INJURED R.A.F. PILOT FOR TWO DAYS IN DESERT . LONDON, -April 2.—The heroic conduct of a former R.A.P. observer, who carried his pilot for two days after their machine had crashed in flames, was commented on by Mr. Hay Halkett, the -Marylebone magistrate, when sentencing the man, Ridley Oake Stanton, to four months' imprisonment He'pleaded guilty to stealing a mink coat, value £250, from the flat of Mrs Kate Rackliffe, at Grove Court. St. John's Wood. Three days before his arrest he was bound over at the same ccurt on charges of stealing jewellery from a house at Marble Arch and attempting to obtain money by forged documents. Crash from 4GOO Feet It was then stated, in explanation of his lapse, that while serving in Iraq in 1925 he crashed in flames from a height of 4000 feet on a flight from Mosul to Baghdad. His pilot was badly burnt, and for two days Stanton carried him until they readied a dressing station, where he died. Stanton was also in hospital for six months.

Detective McDougall said Stanton climbed up a service lift shaft at Groveeourt, crawled, along a narrow coping to a window, took the £250 fur coat from a bedroom, and was eventually found hiding behind the kitchen door with the fur coat at his feet.

He tried to bluff his canters, hit! Confessed later that he had lost his way in the building and that the "porter chap" was too smart for him. "I have been unlucky." he added. The magistrate said his heroism was magnificent, but he could not be allowed to behave in this intolerable way.