BECOMING A SCANDAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 March 1943, Page 2

BECOMING A SCANDAL

' CONVERSION OF CARS. SOLDIERS SENT TO GAOL. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) PALMERSTON N„ March 19. When sentencing soldiers in the Magistrate’s Court, Palmerston North, for car conversions, the Magistrate, Mr H. P. Lawry, declared that such conversions were becoming a scandal. The behaviour of many solders was also becoming a scandal, he said, as they appeared to think they could do as they liked. Giovanni Joseph Betti and Joseph Benjamin Richard Aylward, soldiers, were charged with unlawfully converting a motor-car valued at £4OO, the property of the Army Department, to their own use. They were also charged'with travelling in a railway carriage without procuring a ticket. Betti was further charged with driving at a speed exceeding 40 miles an hour on the Wakanae main highway. Pleas of guilty were entered to all charges. Senior-Sergeant Mclntyre said that the car ran off the road at Waikanae and an overseas serviceman was injured and the car badly damaged. A man who had been at the scene of the accdent noticed a strong smell of liquor, and when he informed them that he was going to the police, they made off. The magistrate sentenced both to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour on the first charge and fined them £1 each on thd second. Betti was fined £lO for travelling at an excessive speed.