STRUCK A CRIPPLE

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 26, 22 April 1927, Page 9

STRUCK A CRIPPLE

MAGISTRATE INDIGNANT ASSAILANT FINED £5 “If it hadn’t been for the character the constable has given you I wouldn’t have given you the option of a fine. It’s a -cowardly thing to do to hit a cripple with only one leg.” Charles Copedo wilted before this blast from the bench in the Police Court this morning. Thomas Hastie, a returned soldier who had left a leg in France, told the court that he had been standing on the corner of Karangahape Road and Pitt his brother one night early last month, when Copedo tapped him on the shoulder and told him his wife wanted to speak with him. He walked down the street, he said, but seeing no sign of his wife, he turned to come back, when Copedo grabbed him by the throat and said “I’ll stop you scandalising.” Hastie’s brother came to the rescue and pulled Copedo off. In the witness-box, the defendant said that he was boarding with Hastie’s wife, who was living apart from her husband. “He tried to hit me with his stick,” Copedo said, “and to defend myself I put my hand on his shoulder to push him away. I received a blow on the neck, and then struck Hastie on the left temple in self-defence, and knocked him down. I didn’t grab him by the throat.”

The constable who read his statement to the court said that he had known Copedo since he was a boy, and he had always been “a decent sort of fellow.” But the magistrate could not forgive him for striking a crippled man about half his own weight. £5 or 14 days was the penalty and an additional £l, witness’s expenses for Hastie and his brother. _