"BRUTAL ASSAULT"

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 24, 28 July 1939, Page 11

"BRUTAL ASSAULT"

CONSTABLE ATTACKED

TWO MEN SENTENCED

Found guilty by a jury in the Supreme Court on a charge of assaulting Constable A. Gregor, at Greytown, and causing him actual bodily harm, Kenneth Sullivan, a labourer, aged 24, and Charles de la Cour, a motor mechanic, aged 30, appeared for sentence before^ Mr. Justice Reed in the Supreme Court today. Sullivan was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment with hard labour, and de la Cour to 12 months' imprisonment with hard labour. His Honour remarked that the constable was brutally assaulted and might have been killed as the result of the attack made upon. him.

Mr. J. D. Wiffls, who appeared for de la Cour, said that it would appear that this was the first time the prisoner had been involved in any serious trouble. He suggested that the case was. one where some leniency 'might be extended to de la Cour in view more' particularly of the fact that possibly he may. have been egged on by .Sullivan while the latter was labouring under 'the delusion that his own brother had been! treated somewhat harshly by the local police.

His Honour said he looked upon the offence as being serious. One could quite understand drunken men possibly assaulting the police when the police were arresting them, and a certain amount of excuse was generally made for men under those circumstances, but in this case the .circumstances were quite different. According to the evidence, the prisoners first of all had gone to the constable's house and arranged with his daughter to communicate with her father. Then they waited for the constable when he was coming home in order to attempt whatever they wanted done. Without any reason at all—certainly not while they were under the influence of liquor though their actions might have been the resultof the after-effects of liquor —they brutally assaulted him and might have killed him. He was an elderly man and was struck over the head and suffered cuts and bruises. His Honour added that he felt he must impose a substantial term, of imprisonment. According to the evidence before him, Sullivan . apparently indulged in assault repeatedly. There did not appear to have been anything much against de la Cour in the past, except som minor convictions.