OFFENCES LINKED

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 122, 25 May 1937, Page 17

OFFENCES LINKED

WIDESPREAD INQUIRY

SUNDAY NIGHT CRIMES

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, May. 24. The theft of an expensive English saloon car from Cheltenham on Sunday night, a burglary at the Fatumahoe Hotel bar early this morning, and the conversion of a 2^-ton truck from West Street, Pukekohe, some time during Sunday night are. all linked in an investigation which police are making in different parts ot Auckland Province. The thieves stole' £5 from a purse left in the car and £7 from the till in the hotel bar. To' deaden the sound of moving coins, mineral water was poured into' the till receptacle. The car and truck were found abandoned down a bank on the Pukekohe-Patu-mahoe Road. Just after-6.30 p.m. on Sunday, Mrs. Harper, Tairiui Road, Cheltenham, drove her car into the garage at the side of the house. Early, this morning it was not there. The house is about 100 yards from the roadway and to remove the car and start it without risk of detection it would be necessary to. open the garage doors and push the car down a long driveway. Mrs. Harper learned this afternoon that her car was found badly damaged at the roadside about 35 miles south of Auckland. • Apparently the thieves drove to the Patumahoe Hotel early this morning, climbed through the office window, and found the. keys of the bar door. The next move appears to have been towards Pukekohe, and the suggestion is that the driver of the car was either travelling too fast and was unfamiliar with the controls, which are different on this particular make of car from most, othsrs, or that the car skidded, for it went over a six-foot bank, through a fence, -and into a paddock. The next move seems to have been made in Pukekohe.'where a truck belonging to Mr. Harold Carter, carrier, of Bombay, was stolen. It is evident that the truck was driven to the spot where the car went over the bank and was used in an endeavour to haul the car back on to the road, for when the police, arrived later in the morning they found the two. vehicles roped together. Nearby residents heard the sound of a truck engine being accelerated. They raised.their windows to look out on to the road, and in so doing presumably frightened the thieves, since the noise of the truck motor died away and was not heard again. ' When the police found the two vehicles the car mudguards were badly crumpled, the .running : boards were smashed, and the front of the car. was damaged. Inside the car were found the keys to the door of the Patumahoe Hotel bar and Mrs. Harper's purse. ;