ATTEMPT TO STEAL SHEEP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 January 1939, Page 6

ATTEMPT TO STEAL SHEEP

TWO MEN SENT TO GAOL. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. “Sheep stealing is easy to commit and difficult to detect, and both the accused will be sentenced to one month’s imprisonment with hard labour,” said Mr H. A. Young, S.M. in the Magistrate’s Court, when William Frederick Stokes, aged 35, and Frank Walter Heywood, aged 28, appeared on a joint charge of attempting to steal, at Belfast, on January 14, a sheep valued at £l, the property of Thomas Borthwick and Son (Australasia) Ltd. Both men pleaded guilty. DetectiveSergeant Sinclair said that for some time past Borthwicks had been missing sheep. A watch had been kept and the accused had been caught red-hand-ed. One escaped, but later both frankly admitted to the police that they had gone into a paddock for the purpose of stealing sheep. Stokes had been before the Court previously. Last Saturday, said counsel, Haywood had gone with Stokes to Belfast and had got very drunk. Haywood had acted as he did under the influence of liquor. He said he had not been to the paddock on any previous occasion, and there was nothing to suggest that this was not so. Stokes also had been under the influence of drink.