£250 Burglary At Waimana

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 18, 3 February 1948, Page 5

£250 Burglary At Waimana

Thief Smartly Arrested And Confesses Guilt

Between 6.30 and 7 o’clock on Saturday night, Eddie Walters, 21-year-old labourer, of Rotorua, burgled Mr Sinclair McConnell’s shop at Waimana and decamped with £252 12s Id in cash and cheques as well as a pair of shoes. By 9 o’clock the same evening Constable B. H. Thomasen, of Taneatua, was back at the store with the culprit in custody and ready to confess.

Yesterday, before Messrs I. _ B. Hubbard and C. H. Christensen J’s P., Walters pleaded guilty and was committed to the Supreme Court at Auckland for sentence. Sergeant B. Collins presented the case for the police. Constable Thomasen told the Court how Walters first of all denied all knowledge of the crime when accosted in the taxi, but confessed when Mr McConnell identified the shoes. He had hidden the cheques under a hedge, had stowed the coin £33 Is ll|d worth in one of Mr McConnells banking bags, under the front seat of the taxi, and had a roll of notes totalling £55 10s under his armpit. At the Taneatua police station he made a statement telling the whole story. According to his statement to Constable Thomasen, Walters, whose home is in Rotorua, came down to a friend’s place at Opotiki for the week-end, on the Saturday, borrowed a bicycle to go over to Waimana and collect some of his belongings from McConnell’s store, where he had worked as a van driver for about three months before December 8 last. Arrived there he found the store closed, Mr McConnell being away for a meal. So Walters got the idea of breaking in, “to see if he could find any money.” Parking a banana box against the wall under the office window, he wangled the catch open-with a piece of wire, collected all the available money and the shoes and departed on his borrowed bicycle. At Kutarere he .telephoned Opotiki for a taxi, which had just picked him up when Constable Thomasen arrived.

To have the burglar in custody less than two hours after the crime, which happened some distance from the nearest police station, is a commendable performance on the part of Constable Thomasen, who had iao very definite clues to work on in the first instance, but followed up the lead o.f someone who had noticed a stranger leaving town on a bicycle headed for Opotiki.