MOTORIST CONVICTED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 May 1939, Page 8

MOTORIST CONVICTED

CHARGE OF CAUSING DEATH WHILE INTOXICATED.' .

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, May 12

A. verdict of guilty on the indictment of William Jaggar on a charge of causing death while intoxicated in charge of a motor-vehicle was returned by a jury in the Supreme Court. The charge against Jaggar related to an accident on February 15 near the junction of Harper Avenue, Dean’s Avenue and Fendalton Road, in which Raymond Henry Fleming was fatally injured, when a motor-cycle in which he was a passenger collided with a motor-truck driven by Jaggar. Summing up, Mr Justice Blair said it was the business of a driver to know the faults of the vehicle he was driving. A driver was not entitled to rely, as a defence, on the inefficiency of his brakes, and, if the accelerator Was faulty, there were othei’ ways of reducing speed. The defence invited the jury to say that at 5.10 p.m. the liquor Jaggar had had three hours earlier had not begun to work, and that it was not till the shock of the accident had communicated itself to him that the drink began to work and made a sober man drunk. The jury retired at 4.48 p.m. and returned at 6.5 p.m. JAGGAR SENTENCED TWO YEARS’ IMPRISONMENT. CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. ' Two years’ imprisonment and disqualification for holding a motor driving licence for ten years, was the sentence of Mr Justice Blair, in the Supreme Court this morning, upon William Jaggar, who was found guilty by a jury of causing death through reckless driving while intoxicated.