SAFE BLOWERS GET TWO YEARS’ GAOL

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17757, 29 January 1926, Page 1

SAFE BLOWERS GET TWO YEARS’ GAOL

APPEAL FOR LENIENCY PROVES UNAVAILING. Walter Fraser Sheriff Uarneiss and Joseph Hogan Byrne, who caused, some stir a few weeks ago by breaking into Packer and Jones’s premises and trying to blow open a safe with gelignite, appeared in the Supreme Court this morning on a number of charges. They were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.

Their exploits also included entering A. C. Clarke's warehouse at Monck's Bay. J. A. Holmes’s house at Sumner, Mr E. Norton's tobacconist’s shop at Woolston and the Richmond Workingmen’s Club. They were found unlawfully in an ttnoccupied house at 137, St Martin’s Road, where gelignite and other stolen articles were discovered .

Uarneiss, addressing Mr Justice Adams, said: “In appealing for mercy, your Honor, 1 may say that we fully realise the seriousness of our crime. When we committed it, we were not in our normal mind. We came to Christchurch from Rangiora, where we worked on a sawmill. We were not sober since then until after we appeared in the Lower Court. We gave the police information to clear up this matter and did not try to escape, otherwise we may have been at liberty, or we may have killed ourselves with the gelignite in the hiding-place we disclosed to the police. We were wounded during the war, fighting for liberty and for honour, little knowing that our injuries would make us mentally and physically unfit. A man is no stronger than God made him, your Honor. I ask you to take these things into consideration in my appeal for mercy.” Byrne said: “ I had the misfortune to lose my wife, and I have been drinking ever since. During a drinking bout I committed the crime.” Ilis Honor said that each prisoner had a list of previous convictions. Harneiss had been before the court half a dozen times on charges similar to the present ones, and Byrne had bee:; up for wounding with intent, vagrancy, drunkenness, opening a postal packet. and other offences. Each prisoner would be sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.