YOUTHS WITH RIFLES

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 52, 24 May 1927, Page 12

YOUTHS WITH RIFLES

SHOOT UP LETTER-BOX SEQUEL IN COURT (From Our Own Correspondent .) PAPAKURA, To-day. For wilfully damaging a letter box in Ness Valley, near Clevedon, two Auckland youths, Samuel Kerr McLean and Charles Pollard, were each fined £2 and ordered to pay 4s each toward the purchase of a new letterbox, at yesterday’s sitting of the Papakura Court. A bullet-riddled, galvanised iron mail-box produced in court served to remind McLean, the only one of the accused present, of their day's “sport.” The informant, Norman Albert Kent, a farmer, heard shots being fired on the road from his residence a halfmile distant.

A neighbour, George Alister Campbell, saw the youths firing in the direction of the mail-box from behind his haystack, and subsequently recovered empty .303-inch shells. He objected to their doings as he had cattle in the approximate line of fire. Constable T. Holland: A number of complaints have been made of animals having been shot in the Papakura district as the result of the depredations of youth. McLean claimed that one round was fired from the service rifle on issue to him from the Defence Department at a bottle standing three feet below the letter-box. It would be impossible for a bullet to ricochet at such an angle. The magistrate, Mr. Poynton, look the view, that the accused’s markma.nship was bad, and fined them accordingly