THEFT OF RADIO

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 May 1943, Page 4

THEFT OF RADIO

MEMBER OF AIR FORCE BEFORE COURT. £lO FINE IMPOSED. Charles Russell Jones, a member of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, was convicted and fined £lO in the Masterton Magistrate’s Court today before Messrs A. D. Low and H. E. Pither, J’s.P., on a charge of having stolen a radio set, the property of William Orange. Jones pleaded guilty. Detective Sergeant W. Kane said that Mr Orange went away for a holiday on February 3 and left his house insecurely locked. Jones entered the house while Mr Orange was away and took a radio set. He took the chassis out of the case and left the case in Short Street and refitted and painted the set. It was a serious matter as there was a considerable amount of thieving going on around the town that was difficult to detect. At the present time it seemed that people could not leave anything about without it being stolen. Mr Low: “It was a pretty deliberate theft.” Mr Kane said that Jones was a single man in good financial circumstances and need not have stolen the set. In reply to the Bench, Jones said that his own set was not going so he took Mr Orange’s set. “It seems an extraordinary thing to me,” observed Mr Low. Mr Pither: “I can’t understand it.” In entering a conviction and fining Jones £lO the Bench said that as the accused was serving his country usefully he would not be sent to gaol. The accused asked that the Bench order the suppression of his name. “We could not dream of it,” said Mr Low. “If you are ashamed of having your name associated with the theft you should have been too ashamed to have entered Mr Orange’s house.” Mr Pither said that it would mean casting suspicion on other men of the Air Force if the accused’s name were suppressed. 1