YOUTH IN TROUBLE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 179, 1 August 1932, Page 8

YOUTH IN TROUBLE

WANDERING ABOUT COUNTRY MAGISTRATE DEALS LENIENTLY Found in a drunken state on the roadside after being out during a frosty night, Douglas Arthur Cooper, a youth aged 21 years, was taken to the Wanganui Public Hospital on July 15. Subsequently he was brought before Mr J. H. Salmon, S.M., at the" Magistrate’s Court at Wanganui on charges of being a disorderly and idle person without visible means of support and with having stolen a bottle of whisky valued at 12s (id. He was remanded, and appeared before the magistrate again on Saturday morning, when he was convicted and ordered probation for 12 months, on the condition that he proceed to tho Parapara camp. Senior-Sergeant D. A. McLean, said that accused had had a sad history. He had been brought out to the country as an infant by relatives in Timaru. Those relatives had died and since their' death he had been wandering about the countryside. Some nine months ago he had gone to work for a Maori, at Kauangaroa, and then, either from laziness or lack of sense, ho had gone to live amongst the Maoris as a Maori. About July 15 he had been found in an unconscious condition on the roadside by a settler, and had been taken into the Wanganui Public Hospital, where he had arrived in a bad condition. Accused had procured the whisky by ransacking a car owned by a party who had been out shooting. The senior-sergeant said that he had made enquiries but had been unable to find anyone who knew accused. Advice had been received from the Labour Department that he could be placed in the Parapara camps if he was given a chance. Accused had been convicted of theft at Feilding. He was inclined to be lazy. “You seem to be a likely sort of boy, Cooper,” said Mr Salmon, “and it is a pity that you have drifted into this sort of life. I think that if you made an effort you could pull up. 1 will give you a chance to make good; see that you use it.”