USED AXE ON HORSES

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 418, 1 September 1928, Page 13

USED AXE ON HORSES

FARMER’S FIT OF PASSION FINE OF £2O IMPOSED (From Our Oxen Correspondent) KAITAIA, To-day. A case of revolting cruelty to horses came before Mr. J. H. Luxford, S.M.. in the Police Court to-day, when Louis King, gumdigger, Alii para, was charged with ill-treating two horses. The story revealed by the police was that they received a message to go to Ahipara on August 29. They found accused’s two horses, one having a severe axe wound eight inches long by three inches deep on the shoulder. The other was lying dead with a bruise on the head and blood on the nostrils. Accused, when accosted by Constable O’Gorman, said that the horses had been pulling a load up a hill, when they “played, up.” Becoming entangled in the ropes, one fell backwards on to an axe, which was on the sledge. The other was choked by ropes. A suspiicous circumstance was that the blood had been washed off the sledge and axe. Witness said that the cut could only have been given by a person standing at the right, aiming if downwards. Accused and his wife gave evidence as to the position of the axe and the horses, bLit their evidence was conflicting. The Magistrate said that the accused had been guilty of abhorrent cruelty in a fit of uncontrollable passion, and his wife had obviously told her story and washed away traces of the deed to try to save him. In view of accused’s previous good character he would let him off with a fine of £2O and costs, in default two months’ imprisonment