THREE MEN CHARGED WITH ROBBERY ’AND VIOLENCE

Wanganui Chronicle, 14 February 1947, Page 6

THREE MEN CHARGED WITH ROBBERY ’AND VIOLENCE

STORY OF ATTACK ON TWO CHINESE (P.A.) Auckland, Feb. 13. Jointly charged with robbing two Chinese of 1800 American dollars, valued at £540, three £5O notes and jewellery and money to a total value of £774, and using personal violence at the time of the robbery, three young men appeared before Justices in the Magistrate’s Court. They were: Benso Scalabrini, aged 20, American seaman, Selwyn Caplan, aged 21, ship’s fireman, and Selwyn Lowe, a Chinese. Charlie Wong Chuck, pensioner, aged 70, stated that he entered his home at Yelverton Terrace, city, with a Chinese companion snortly after midnight on January 21. He suspected that something was wrong when he saw a side gate unbolted, and as he entered the kitchen of his house a man came from the bedroom and struck him twice. He became semiconscious, but he saw someone come and search his pockets. He identified Caplan as the man who had searched him. Fong Hon gave evidence that he was with the former witness when they were attacked by two masked men. “I was hit with something like a rubber hose with lead inside it,” Mud Hon. He told how h£ fought with a man and rolled arouna the door. A second man came and held him and kept hitting him on the head with the hose. When the men ran out through the back door he went into the street to get help. *T was in Queen Street when I saw' two men come running out from a side lane and jump in a parked car,” said Louis Wellington Parore. He recognised Scalabrini as one of the men. la a statement produced by the police, Caplan said a< Lowe had supplied Scalabriu, . .j himself with two rubber hosri filled with lead and bound with silk blockings. They were short of money and Lowe had told them of a Chinese in the city who would have a lot of “dough” on him. Lowe supplied a plan of the house where the Obbery was to take place. Caplan said Scalabrini and himself entered the house and waited for the Chinese. He describa the fight in the room and how he went through the Cninaman s pockets and took out a roll of dollar bills. The tw o men then got into a car where Lowe was waiting in the street near the place and went to a house in the country’. He stuck a roll of dollar bills, with three £5O notes attached to it, in his pocket and he and Scaiabrini divided a sum of about 1700 dollars between them. They did not tell Lowe of inis money, or the £5O notes, but they divided the New Zealand money with Lowe. A statement by Scalabrini was also produced by the police supporting the statement by Caplan. The case was adjourned.