HE BEHAVED LIKE A LUNATIC

NZ Truth, Issue 1201, 6 December 1928, Page 9

HE BEHAVED LIKE A LUNATIC

TRESPASSER ON TRACK CAUSES A LIVELY SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Taxi-driver Tait Let His Mental Engine Get Hot .And Failed To Put The Brake On His Temper

TAIT faced Magistrate Hunt at the Auckland Police Court on a charge of having assaulted Capt: I George Arthur Humphries Davis and Stanley Austin Carr, land-owners In the Clevedon district. Capt. Humphries-Davis told' the court that on Sunday, September 9, he ivas calling m his car;, with his wife, at Carr' s .farm. .' . i , . His attention was attracted by seeing a dog chasing some of his own and his neighbor's sheep. Not far .away was a strange motor-car, and near it were a man and a girl, and Tait and a woman. Oh the 9aptain asking who the dog belonged to, Talt said it was his, and the former said: "Can't you see it's chasing the sheep?" Tait replied: "It's doing nothing of the kind; it's piayiilg with them." - This explanation did not satisfy the captain. He told the court that . there; ! were eleven sheep within five yards of where the men were standing.

Refused To Leave

Talt was asked to £ive his riame, but, according to the captain's evidence, he i'B plied: "I'm ari. inspector of forestry." The WcJman put her spoke m with: "You'd better be careful." Tait followed this by saying: "I'll go anywhere I like." The Irate captain then said: "You both refuse to go off the property?" Tait replied: "Yes, we do." Tait. then walked off as though to CQiitihUe , clown the track towards the beach. He had a screw-topped jar under his< arm, and he announced that his psLt-ty were going down to the beach for tea. The captain waxed facetious and asked Tait where his hammer was. He explained to the court that a hammer, usually accompanied the type of jar Tait had and there was an oyster bed oil the beach. "In the meantime a man with a gun came along. I know who the man was, but don't think I should say," continued the sheep-farmex-. "What has the gun got to do with it?" aMked Lawyer Singer' (appearing for Tait).

' Going To Out You"

"Tait tried to get the gun from the other man," replied the captain. "I said to the other man: 'Do you mind seeing fhat they tjo.'" . The other man left the scene then, and when ha had vanished, Tait said to Humphries-Davis: "Now, you I've got y6li alOne. I'm going to out you." "The woman said: 'Get into him,'" j continued the witness, "and he started striking at me. "He struck at me repeatedly. I dodged his blow|3. He is very Clumsy on his feet. The other man came up and he ceaaed to. strike at me. "I've done some boxing m my time, and he was not hard to avoid. . w "He started^ to swear at me again, and came at me again. The other man I got between Tait and the car. Tait then took his coat off." Carr had not, up to then, arrived on the scene of the combat, but the captain said he knew he wns somewhere near, and would soon arrive.

(From "N.Z. Truth's" Special Auckland Representative.)

A tiny dog" — to wit^ a Pomeranian — was the cause of a heated disturbance on a farm at Ctevedon on an otherwise peaceful Sabbath. A verbal argument developed into a scrap compared with which a Donnybrook Fair could be classed as a Sunday school picnic. As a result, a taxi-driver named James Tait was sent to gaol.

"J caught him by the coat," went on the captain, "and pulled him over on me an.d. held him." Tait at last got away, but the two men were down again when Carr arrived oh the scene. "Carr came, and we held him till we were both exhausted," the witness told the bench, and the mere recollection of

that strenuous time made the captain look warm. . Tait then said: "You accused me of having a hammer. I 'have one," and the weapon came to light from somewhere. ■ . , Magistrate Hunt asked the captain: "Where's the other man?" "In gaol, serving- a long sentence," was the reply.

Dog Chasing Sheep Led To Ferocious Attack On Two Farmers By Man With A Hammer And His Hands

The hammer proved to be a large tack hammer, and once again the two men, so unequally matched, came to. holts. The captain said 'he thought Carr was going to pass out, he was so exhausted owing to the conflict, and it was . at this -juncture that the former went to. see if he could find a spanner m his car, but his Search was fruitless. All this time Carl 1 was grappling with Tait, who. threatened to burn the house and car down. : Evidently Tait was behaving: like a flend. The witness told the court: "I think both Carr and myself owe our lives to the intervention of Mrs. Carr and Mrs. Humphries-Davia. They had come to our help." , Following, on this, it transpired that a man .named Ferguson came oh the scene and kept Tait from going towards the house. To Lawyer Singer, the captain said that he 'had an umbrella m his hand

Not Public Track

When- the affair began, but Tait grabbed It and threw it away. The track on which Tait intended travelling, or had so far travelled, was not a public one. It was on private property; though Tait said it had repeatedly been used by cars, and it was necessary to go through a fence to enter it. Tait was exceedingly drunk. The other man appeared to be perfectly sober. He had nothing against the other man except that he refused to help. The evidence of Stanley Austin Carr went to show that he had seen a dog chasing the sheep, and later he had seen Captain Humphries-Davis and Tait rolling m the grass. Carr thought Tait was, to use his own words, "Non compos mentis." . "He picked up a hammer, and. I thought he was going to do us all m. He' said he'd hammer our brains out, or-words to that effect," sai.d. the witness. Carr added that he had also heard the threa.t to burn. Replying to a question from Lawyer Hacbßeen Drinking Singer, Carr replied : "He was the nearest thing to s. raving lunatic you could imagine. I'll say he was sufficiently sober to be able to handle himself. I'd say he was a lunatic m preference to him being i drunk." j "A nice, pleasant Sunday afternoon,"' was the terse comment from the bench. Lawyer Singer said there was no defence to ooffer"ther — r"the man had been drinking and behaved like a raving lunatic." The magistrate, characterising Tait as a blackguard, remarked: "Here's" a man trespasses on another man's property, and lies about being m the Forestry. Department." [ Tait was sentenced to a month on the charge of assaulting Captain Humphries-Davis, and fined £10 for his assault on Carr, or m default of the latter, a month's further imprisonment. The witnesses' expenses .which had accumulated over the several adjournments were assessed at £7.