TAXIMAN FINED £3

Taranaki Daily News, 23 December 1930, Page 13

TAXIMAN FINED £3

SPEEDED ACROSS INTERSECTION.

EVIDENCE OF ALIBI FAILS.

“If an alibi is pleaded it must be brought forward as early as. possible, and yet when interviewed by Constable O’Neill that evening or nest morning he knew nothing about it. That was the time he should have produced his alibi.” With these remarks Mr. R. W. Tate, S.M., at New Plymouth yesterday fined Basil Blackball, taximah, £3 and 15s. costs for driving at a greater speed than 15 miles an hour across the inter” section of Weymouth and St. Aubyn Streets on the evening of November 10. James B. Street, until recently in the employ of Blackball, remembered being

(stopped at Eliot Street ‘ about 7' o’clock on the night in question and sent to Westown. Ho returned with a passenger to Gover Street. He saw Basil Blackhall’s car on the stand in Brougham Street as he passed along Powderhani Stret eastwards about 7.15. He had been approached • twice-by tho police on the matter. He had then said that lie had not seen‘Blackball and that he, personally, had not seen 'Blackhall. Later he' went to the station and made a statement similar to his evidence that day.

Thomas N. Blackhall, father of Basil Blackball, said that on the night of November. 10 he instructed Douglas Hoskin to drive to H.M.S. Dunedin by 7 p.m. Ho left witness’ place just before 7 o’clock.

To the magistrate: His son owned one Red Top car and he owned the other two. The car Hoskin drove "belonged to witness. ■ tf .

Douglas Hoskin remembered stopping with a load, of sailors near the -Wey-: mouth Street crossing. • He kept a record of ‘ ‘liis jobs’ ’ ‘ln ” a loose-leaf ■? diary produced.* This”shdw'e'd he start- •' ed.from the port' at’7.lo and returned to .the stand”at (7.20” On t’he way in he had popped ’ at’t’he’DeVohpo’r’t Flats'and at. thi Grosvenor Hotel. The , magistrate commented all this evidence had been called 0a what was' quite a minor charge. (He was asked to believe that the evidence of Constable O’Neill and the independent witness, Mrs. Baker, was wholly wrong. He preferred to accept their evidence, however. He pointed out that’ the evidence for the defence was not inconsistent With Blackball having been at the intersection at the time stated, and he was not by any means satisfied that he was hot there. ’