People v. Cameron

KERRIGAN, J.

The defendant was convicted of an attempt to commit burglary, and appeals from the judgment and an order denying him a new trial.

On the eighth day of January, 1921, at about 1:45 A. M., the defendant and one Fleming were seen standing at the front door of a garage on Seventh Street, in Richmond, by two police officers. Apparently the defendant was trying to pry off the lock of the door. The officers approached the garage, whereupon the defendant and his companion walked away. The officers followed, and as they passed the garage • they noticed that the door lock was missing. They continued to follow the couple, and while doing so observed Fleming in the act of discarding certain articles. Being overtaken by the officers, and failing to satisfactorily account for their presence in that locality at such a time, they were taken into custody. On the way to the jail the defendant attempted to escape, and upon his refusal to halt was fired upon and wounded by one of the officers, and recaptured. Subsequently a flash-light was found in the neighborhood, also two tire-tools and a box-opener or claw-tool. A brass Yale padlock of the garage had been pried off, and was picked up in the path of the retreat of the defendant, and a pair of pliers was found in the. pocket of the defendant.

Fleming was called as a witness for the prosecution, and he corroborated the testimony of the police officers, and said that the defendant had told him that he intended to break into the Richmond garage. He also testified that the defendant had used a tire-tool and a box-opener to open the lock; that one of the tools used to open the lock had been obtained from a grocery-store in Richmond burglarized that evening by the defendant and himself. It was also shown

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by marks on the door that one of the tools used to pry off the lock was of the size of that taken from the grocery-store.

No claim is made by the defendant that the evidence is insufficient to sustain the verdict, but he contends that the court erred in admitting over his objection the evidence tending to prove him guilty of robbing the grocery-store, and that the judgment should be reversed for this reason.

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