EXTRAORDINARY CASE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 September 1941, Page 3

EXTRAORDINARY CASE

SUPERINTENDENT WHO STARTED FIRES. NOVEL CONDITION OF SENTENCE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, September 18. The novel condition that he should not again have any connection with fire brigades was imposed by Mr Justice Callan in the Supreme Court today on Brian Clark Edwards, aged 27, till recently superintendent of the Coromandel Fire Brigade, who .ad-' mitted setting fire to three buildings in Coromandel and had given as the reason his desire to try the efficiency of the brigade. Making a plea for probation, Mr Butler said Edwards was a service car driver who had previously been in the Onehunga Fire Brigade. In his spare time in Coromandel he became zealous in rehabilitating the local bngade. Somewhat under the influence of drink, prisoner conceived the extraordinary idea of starting fires in disused sheds and an unoccupied bacn. The first two fires were extinguished, but the bach was destroyed. The judge said it was somewhat unusual for the Court to be able to feel justified in admitting to probation a man who deliberately committed the grave crime of arson on tlnee occasions. It was truly an extraordinary case. Edwards would be admitted to probation for'three years with the conditions that he take cut a probation order, that he live where directed by the probation officer, that he be not i connected with any fire brigade, and that he pay from his own earnings i £75 to the owner of the bach and 21s, costs of the prosecution.