Fathers stealing to live

MOUNT Hagen District Court magistrate Lydia Karre lamented that too many married men were turning to theft to support their children and wives in the city.
She said this on Friday when sentencing two men to prison for theft.
“It is shameful to be a thief but they are not feeling the shame,” she said.
Walu Martin, 21, a father of two from Hela’s Margarima, pleaded guilty to stealing and smashing a K250 mobile phone belonging to Gibson Kemapu in the Mt Hagen fire station on Aug 28.
Martin asked the court to have mercy on him because he was a father of two children, unemployed and a first time offender.
Karre said: “You don’t care about your wife and children.
“If you care, you wouldn’t be going around stealing.
“You may have stolen many times in the past but this is the first time you have been caught and charged.”
She ordered Martin to serve two months with hard labour in Baisu prison.
In the other case, another married man pleaded guilty to stealing a Samson galaxy S4 mobile phone costing K1,500 from a woman passenger in a bus in Mt Hagen.
Simon Koropa, 38, from Baiyer, grabbed Rose Mary’s phone in a bus near the Holy Trinity bus stop.
“I have dealt with such thefts in buses and in the city at least 97 times.
“It is getting unsafe for the public,” she said, jailing Koropa to three months.