LOAD OF WHISKY

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 102, 27 October 1945, Page 8

LOAD OF WHISKY

RECEIVING CHARGE

TAXI-DRIVER CONVICTED

In the Supreme Court yesterday afternoon a jury found Dominic Fitzgerald, taxi-driver, 30, guilty of receiving 246 cases of whisky and a threeton truck, knowing them to have been dishonestly obtained, and also of unlawfully, converting the truck to his own use. He was acquitted on a charge of breaking and entering and theft from the warehouse of T. and W. Young, Ltd., Egmont Street. Mr. Justice Johnston remanded the prisoner for sentence. »

Mr. W. H-. Cunningham conducted the prosecution, and Mr. C. EvansScott represented the accused. In outlining the Crown case, Mr. Cunningham said the jury must have wondered that there was so much whisky in the possession of one firm in Wellington. "No doubt," he said, "there was a sigh of relief when you knew that it had actually been recovered by the firm and had not gone out of circulation." Mr. Cunningham said it would be shown that two days before the warehouse was broken into a carrier named Warren, who lived at Kilbirnie, was asked by the accused if he could store 100 cases of whisky in his garage. Warren jokingly replied, "A thousand if you can get them." The accused had told the police that he had been approached in Dixon Street on September 9 by a man he did not know and told there was "a score" for.him if. he would drive a truck the following evening from Cable Street to the Petone railway crossing. The truck was seen leaving the firm's store on the evening of September 12 fully loaded, and Warren would say that the accused later arrived at his place and said that he had got 250 cases of whisky which had come from T. and W. Young. Warren refused to have anything to do with it. The truck was outside at the time. The accused then left. Some other men were also outside at the time. Later in the evening a police car overtook the loaded truck on the Hutt Road. The accused was driving it and was alone. The signs on the truck had been freshly painted out and there was black paint of enamel on overalls which the accused was wearing. He told the story of having been engaged to drive ■ the truck to Petone, and said he did not know what was in the load. "The humour of it is that, having got the 246 cases away from the store in the early night, those concerned had nowhere to take it when Warren turned them down, so they were making for the country, probably to consider the position and see what could be done," said Mr. Cunningham. It was hard to imagine that Fitzgerald's story could possibly be true. Was it likely .that anyone who had: gone to such trouble to obtain the: whisky would turn it over to a stranger in the street and ask him- to drive it to Petone? At the conclusion of the Crown case Mr. Evans-Scott said that he did not propose to call evidence. He contended that there had been no evidence _ to .connect the accused with the breaking and entering, and that his story as to his part in. the affair was perfectly reasonable and consistent with innocence. Counsel also urged that the fact that the police had found a car parked at the Petone railway crossing with a 12-gallon drum of petrol m it indicated that the intention was not to store the whisky at Warren's place but to take it further afield. He asked the jury to disregard Warren's evidence as to his conversations with the i_.CC USGCL His Honour, in summing up, said there was no suggestion in the evidence that Warren was an accomplice. One question for the jury was whether the accused knew what was in the load. -