POSTBAG ROBBED

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20911, 16 September 1939, Page 10

POSTBAG ROBBED

OFFENCE BY BOY CHEQUES AND MONEY ORDERS STOLEN ART UNION TICKETS SOLD (By Telegraph.—Press Association) CHRISTCHURCH, Saturday. While delivering parcels around a suburb, a 14-year-old message boy removed 71 postal packages from a bag on a postman’s cycle outside a shop, and taking them home opened them in his bedroom and removed cheques, postal notes, money orders and stamps of a total value of £26 12s 4d, later usii:ig some of the money orders. On the day before he stole four books of art union tickets from a shop counter, and after selling some of the tickets at 2s 6d each destroyed the others. Tliis morning he pleaded guilty in the Children’s Court of the thefts. “It is obvious you are a thief, and a consistent thief, and we would be failing in our duty to the community if we did not place some restraint on you,’’.said the .Magistrate, Mr F. F. Reid, in committing the boy to the care of the State. Detective-Sergeant Ilakrow said the youth had spent 13s 7d. He had destroyed three cheques, and all the letters and other notes had been hidden in a woodshed. He had been before the court in 1936.