CONSTABLE HURT.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20231, 15 February 1934, Page 5

CONSTABLE HURT.

Three Young Men Sent to Gaol. DELIBERATE ASSAULT. Per Press A.3sociatiorL DUNEDIN, February 14. u A deliberate and persistent assault” was how the Magistrate, Mr J. R. Bartholomew, S.M., characterised the offence which led to the appearance in the Police Court to-day of three young men charged on remand with assaulting Constable Cromie in the execution of his duty. The accused were Thomas Joseph Daly, Arthur Francis Kean and Douglas Gordon Pannell. Daly and Kean were also charged with using obscene language. The charges, to which the accused pleaded guilty, related to happenings at the St Ivilda beach last Saturday afternoon, when the accused assaulted the constable. The Magistrate said it had been urged that the men were under the influence of liquor, but offences were frequently committed under the influence of liquor. The place where two of the men had used obscene language of an ugly nature was a bathing-shed on the beach, and the constable very properly checked them for using the language, and then these young men, knowing that he was a constable, had committed “ a deliberate and persistent assault,” in the course of which the constable was considerably injured. In cases of assault on a constable the public interest had to be safeguarded. On the charge of using obscene language, Daly and Kean were each fined £2, in default seven days’ imprisonment, and on the charge of assault each of the accused was sentenced to fourteen days’ imprisonment with hard labour.