FIGHT IN CELL

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 1, 3 January 1939, Page 4

FIGHT IN CELL

TWO DRUNK MEN

MAGISTRATE'S COMMENT

Comment on the fact that two men in a drunken condition were placed together in a cell at the Mount Cook police station was made by Mr. J. H. Luxford, S.M., .in the Magistrate's Court today, when witnesses described a fight in the cell between John Paton Hardy, aged 32, a composition and I Thomas Francis King, aged 56, a labourer. Hardy was. convicted and discharged .for drunkenness, fined £1 for procuring liquor during the currency of a prohibition order, and fined £2 and ordered to make good the damage on a charge of wilfully breaking two panes of glass, valued at 21s. the property of Pauline Mac Harper. He pleaded guilty to aIL the charges. King pleaded riot guilty to assaulting Hardy, in the cell, but-was fined £1. Sub-Inspector J. A. Dempsey said that Hardy and others were drinking at a house in Abel Smith Street. A constable on. duty found the front window broken by a beer bottle thrown from inside the house, and other windows were also broken. "I'm not giving any praise to the house or the conduct of the house," said the subinspector. Mrs. Mac Harper had two black eyes; a great deal of damage was done inside the house, and there were even holes in the floor. Hardy said' that he had come down from the bush near Taumarunui the same day and had no recollection of what had happened. The sub-inspector said that King had been arrested on charges of drunkenness and fighting, for which' he had already been dealt with. He and Hardy were placed in the same cell at Mount Cook, where a fight developed in which King got a black eye and Hardy a hit over the head with a cell utensil. Hardy needed treatment in hospital.) Hardy said that he was too drunk to remember anything. i King said he was sitting half asleep on the bench in the cell when someone .hit him in the eye. He did not remember what happened after that as he was half drufik. The Magistrate remarked that^it was. fortunate that Hardy did, not get bad concussion or a fracture of the skulL He did not know the circumstances at Mount Cook, but it did seem a littje startling that men in that condition should be put in a cell together where there was no guard. Something might have happened with the men in such a drunken state, especially as Hardy had been violent in another place.