“TOO LATE, OLD MAN”

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 72, 16 June 1927, Page 11

“TOO LATE, OLD MAN”

APOLOGY AFTER ASSAULT TWO MEN FINED “fpHE whole thing has been planned by these two men for some time, to deal with me.” In the witness box at the Police Court this morning, John Bartlett Bakalich, an elderly man, made this dramatic accusation against Kenneth Malcolm McDonald, aged 41, and John Thomas Scott, 29, who stood in the dock charged with assaulting him. Bakalich told the Court that he saw the two men, whom he knew by sight, at the corner of THE SUN office in Albert Street, where there was a big crowd waiting for the acceptances about 9 p.m. on June 3. Scott asked him for a race-card, and called him “a damned liar” when he said he couldn’t give him one. The assault took place at the corner of Swanson and Albert Streets.

“Scott said ‘Take that, you Austrian ,’ ” Bakalich went on, and then struck him a blow in the face.

“McDonald rushed between Scott and I,” he continued, “and swung me round the corner and started butting at my face with his heart and kicking me on the shins. I felt a hand go into my breast pocket and I Eang out ‘Police!’ Let me go!’” Scott pleaded guilty to the assault, but McDonald through his counsel, Mr. J. J. Sullivan, denied being there at all, and called his wife to prove that he had been at home until 9 o’clock on the night of the King’s Birthday, when the assault took place. “I’m positive sure that these two men were together,” Bakalich told Mr. Sullivan, under cross-exami-nation. “They came round next day to apologise, Wit I said, ‘Too late, old man.’ ”

In a statement to Detective Nalder, McDonald said that he wqs drunk that night and didn’t know whore he was. Scott told the police that he thought Bakalich was a bookmaker. “The suggestion that I intended to rob him is wrong. I was more or less intoxicated, but I only struck him, he said. , Mr. Sullivan made a strong appeal to Mr. W. R. McKean, S.M., not to send the men to gaol. “It looks to me as if it was an assault with intent to rob,” said the magistrate. „ . . . “I know these men personally, ChietDetective Cummings told him. “They’re about the streets a lot together. Their general reputation is of men given to violence.” . “That is a very serious aspect of the case for the defending counsel, said Mr. Sullivan to the Bench, and objected that the men were not charged with intent to rob, hut only with assault. Mr. McKean disagreed that ocott had provocation for the blow. At this stage Mr. Cummings signified his intention to withdraw the charges of vagrancy against the two m “We’ve got complete evidence to refute those charges,” said Mr. bumvan. “My friend is wise to withdraw th “ Well, lie’s a married man with three children and I don’t want to send him to prison, said the magis trate, referring to McDonald. I consider his the more serious offence. McDonald was therefore fined the maximum £lO, and Scott £7, and each was allowed until June -3 to find the money.