“PIG-HEADED”

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20763, 25 June 1937, Page 8

“PIG-HEADED”

MOTORIST GETS INTO TROUBLE COUNSEL MAKES AN ACCUSATION By Telegraph—Press Association BLENHEIM, June 24. An unusual story concerning a Marlborough motorist who went to a garage in town to get his car and upon learning that the ignition key had been removed by the police produced a duplicate key and drove the car away was related in the Magistrate’s Court to-day, when a motorist whose name was suppressed, was convicted and fined £5 and costs by Justices of the Peace on a charge of driving while intoxicated. Sergeant Smyth stated that the key was removed on receipt of an anonymous message concerning the accused’s condition. The accused was subsequently arrested outside a shop in the car. He was examined by two doctors who agreed that he was affected by liquor. If the accused had taken the advice of the police there would have been no trouble, but he had acted in a pig-headed fashion. “The sergeant is quite right. Tire accused has been pig-headed or rather he is of the bulldog breed and objected to the removal of the key of the car,” said counsel, who contended that it was a borderline case. The accused was actually on his way to the police station to seek an explanation for the removal of the key. Counsel claimed that fully 80 per cent of the people leaving clubs ( and hotels in Blenheim and 50 per cent of those leaving dances were in a less fit state to drive a car than the defendant had been. Sergeant Smith took exception to counsel's remarks. "So far as Blenheim is concerned we have produced more drunken drivers than most other towns of the same size, and the offenders have not come from hotels or clubs either.” “A case like this is most unfortunate at the present time,” remarked the spokesman for the Justices. “The Bench has been hauled over the coals by Mr Semple, who has told us that we are too lenient in these cases. I have known the defendant for many years and can quite understand his manner when the key was taken away. Most other people would have done what he did.”