Farm Gates Vanish On New Year's Eve: Conflicting Stories

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 75, 8 April 1949, Page 4

Farm Gates Vanish On New Year's Eve: Conflicting Stories

“You might convince some people,” safd Constable R. F. Julian, prosecuting, to John Fox, charged in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday with the theft of, or alternatively the wilful damaging of, two -gates at Mr Peter James Clark’s Onepu farm on New Year’s Eve.

“I am one of the ‘some people’ referred to by the Constable,” said His Worship in accepting the defendant’s story of the evening’s events and dismissing the information. -Mr H. O. Cooney conducted Fox’s defence.

The complainant alleged he saw a man he thought was Fox at one end of a gate which was lifted off its hinges and sounded to be deposited on a truck. He swore the only truck in the vicinity at the time was Fox’s. Others in the house at the time when Fox and his wife called •to serenade and wish Clark a “happy New Year,” backed the complainant’s story that a small gate had been smashed and a larger one lifted off the strainer and taken away. Other Maoris had been there, but they were uncertain how many, though sure / there were at least four.

Fox said he and his wife called at Clark’s on the way to another neighbour’s place, merely to give a friendly greeting. Clark was in bed, and they were just leaving when another party arrived. They went on to their original destination, where Clark followed and i accused Fox of taking the gates. Fox denied having touched them.