MAGISTRATE'S COURT

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2665, 10 January 1916, Page 9

MAGISTRATE'S COURT

A MAORI MAID QUEER STORY OF ALLEGED MISFORTUNE. When the Magistrate's Court sittins commenced on Saturday before Mr. D. G. A. Cooper, S.M., the first person to appear ill the dock was a Maori girl, named Margaret Hegara, 18 .years of age, who was charged with being an idle and disorderly person, having insufficient lawful means of support. Sub-Inspector Mackinnon asked that the accused be remanded for a week until her relatives could bp communicated with. The girl arrived from Auckland on Wednesday last and told an extraordinary story to the police in explanation of her destitute condition. She claimed to be a native of Samoa, where, she alleged, her mother was a guide. The girl further stated that she. procured a return ticket at Samoa with the object of touring New Zealand, that she left Auckland on Tuesday with a railway ticket and £30 in money, that slio was robbed of her money at Ohakune, and that the guard of the train being drunk (so she alleged) tore up her ticket, removed her - from a- first-class carriage to a second-class carriage and threatened to put her off the train altogether. SubInspector. Mackinnon went on to say that 011 account of the girl's story, she was placed in the Catholic Hostel until the facts could be ascertained. It was after she declared that she had travelled from Samoa to Honolulu in a tram-car that the police were convinced that her allegations against the railway guard were false, and it had since been ascertained that the mother of the accused was a guide in Rotorua. The matter was a serious one for the railway guard, who might already have been suspended oil account of accused's falsehoods. A remand for a week was granted.