#yoshiyuki uno murder

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"‘Guilty’ Dramatic Verdict Ends 5-Day Murder Hearing,” Vancouver Sun. April 18, 1942. Page 19. ---- Weary Jury Suspends; Discussion Overnight ---- A 12-man jury returned at 11:10 a.m. today with a verdict of guilty, accompanied by a strong recommendation for mercy, in the case of four youths accused of the holdup slaying of Yoshiyuki Uno, January 16. They were sentenced by Mr. Justice Sidney Smith to hang July 15. 

Consideration of their verdict was suspended until today, when Arthur van Heck, foreman, reported shortly before 10 p.m. Friday that some of jurors were very tired after five days of evidence and argument.

When faced by what is believed to be a request unprecedented in criminal jurisprudence in this province, Mr. Justice Sidney Smith immediately agreed and the jurors left, in charge of Sheriff Frank Keill, to spend their fifth night in Hotel Georgia.

They returned at 10 a.m. today to have part of the evidence read to them and resume their deliberations. 

The youthful accused, apparently steeled for a verdict again descended the long stairway to Provincial Police quarters with their fate undecided. 

GAZES AT GIRL  A mute request to pray for him was made by Pte. Robert Hughes to his girl friend, Jackie, Who has sat since she gave evidence against him, within a few yards of the prisoners' dock. 

While the eyes of the other accused: Floyd Berrigan, 18, William George . Billamy, 20, and John Petryk (Penchuk), 17, were downcast, the soldier gazed fixedly at Jackie most of the time counsel and judge addressed the jury.

 Once he shook his head slowly at her and the girl Hung many sidelong glances in his direction. 

As the court dispersed at 10 o'clock, David Hughes, father of the accused soldier, collapsed in the corridor and was taken to his home in a police car. 

The jury retired at 6; 50 p.m., after a charge by Mr. Justice Smith which occupied an hour and 35 minutes. 

SECOND KNOCK It was 8:45 when they returned from dinner and within an hour spectators, who crowded the court throughout the day and evening, heard the fateful knock, which usually signifies a verdict or a request, for further instructions. 

Ten minutes later, there was another knock and, when the court assembled,  Foreman Arthur van Kleck said: 

"Your Lordship, the jury is not yet in agreement but is not in disagreement, either. As several members are very tired, I wondered if I might ask for an adjournment until tomorrow morning. We would like to have some of the evidence read but prefer to wait until morning for it." 

"Certainly," replied Mr. Justice Smith, "and, of course, your deliberations will be suspended, until you have; heard the evidence you wish.”

Crown Prosecutor Alfred Bull, K.C., was. first to address the jury. 

He was followed by William A. Schultz in a 30-minute plea for an acquittal for Petryk, youngest of the accused.  

He, with other defense counsel, contended that an acquittal on the murder charge would not mean they will go scot free as all face trial on a charge of robbery with violence in connection with a holdup of G. R. Chapman's store a few minutes earlier that same evening. 

DRUNKENNESS URGED He described Rosella Gorovenko, 16, who allegedly was living at the Piccadilly Hotel with Hughes and Billamy, as a "fair weather friend.” It was for the jury to decide whether she came into court to tell the truth or to save herself, having admitted that she would like to have gone to the holdups. 

Briefest of the addresses was that of G. R. Annable, counsel for Hughes. He attacked the credibility of the mother, brother and sister of the holdup victim because of discrepancies in their evidence about the shooting. 

Drunkenness was. urged by J. S. Burton on Billamy's behalf. 

He referred to evidence of Rosella that she and the four accused consumed a 26-ounce bottle of 30 overproof rum and visited a beer parlor just before the boys started out to hold up the two stores.

Hughes chewed gum and smiled faintly at Jackie when Billamy's counsel said:

"Rosella had some reason for changing from the position of having Hughes putting a wedding ring on her finger to giving evidence against him at this trial. . . You should not hang a rat on the evidence of that girl."

T. F. Hurley made the last plea for an acquittal on behalf of Berrigan, whom he described as a recent acquaintance of the other accused. 

ADMINISTER LAW Such a detailed account of such a sordid, stupid crime! 

So Mr. Justice Sidney Smith described the five-day hearing.

"I know of only one law in Canada that is administered throughout the whole of the Dominion. It protects the last, lowliest and least just as much as the first, highest and best. The family of the holdup victim is entitled to your best consideration just as much are the prisoners."

“Consequences are not for you and they are not for me," continued His Lordship. "Our duty is to administer the criminal law of Canada and our duty may be considered well done if we do that which lies at hand and give no heed to what lies farther on.”

Mr. Justice Smith told the jury that if Hughes is not guilty, none were guilty. But if they decided that Hughes was the .man who killed, the Japanese, " they must then consider whether the other accused were parties of a common enterprise which resulted in murder. 

UNANIMOUS TESTIMONY "You have heard a lot about the girl, Rosella," said His Lordship.

"I have no doubt that she is a very immoral young woman, but that does not mean she cannot speak the truth. It is for you to say whether you believe her."

Mr, Justice Smith pointed out that the discrepancies and inconsistencies were part of the defense and it was for the jurors to decide what weight they would bear. 

"But you come back to the fact that the mother, daughter and son were unanimous that Hughes was the. man who fired the shots," he said.  

Regarding the other three, His Lordship said if the jury found they were a party to the plan to hold up the stores, that Uno was killed in the prosecution of that plan and they were there, the verdict for all must be guilty. 

Turning to the defense argument that all but Hughes abandoned the Japanese robbery, Mr. Justice Smith asked if it were not that the three ran out when they saw there was trouble, and was there anything in the evidence regarding their actions after the shooting that suggested they had abandoned the enterprise? They must deal with each accused separately and there was no middle course on which they could come to rest with respect to any of them, Mr. Justice warned.    

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“Police Hold Three Suspects in Murder of City Japanese,” Vancouver Sun. January 17, 1942. Page 17. ---- Youth Shot During Holdup Struggle ---- Three men are held by police and were to face an identification line-up this afternoon in connection with the cowardly murder of Yoshiyuki Uno, 27, Japanese furniture manufacturer, during a holdup in his parents' confectionery store at Fourth Avenue and Alberta Street Friday night. 

Uno was shot as he struggled with one of the bandits to protect other members of his family. 

Five minutes before the shooting; three men, thought to be the slayers, held up Chapman's confectionery store, 2333 Columbia Street, and escaped with $30 after on of them fired a wild "shot into a shelf."' 

The three suspects were brought in by police after they investigated an assault complaint at a West Pender Street rooming house. Two men and a 17-year-old girl who were in the same rooming house are held for investigation in connection with the assault.

ASKED FOR CIGARETTES At the Japanese store, the leader of the three thugs grabbed $2 from the cash register before pumping three shots into Yoshiyuki Uno.

Uno, left lying in the middle of the floor, was taken to Vancouver General Hospital in an Exclusive Service ambulance, and died at 9:10 p.m. 

The victim's parents, two sisters and brother saw him shot down as, his left hand bleeding from the first shot," he tried to wrest a revolver from the gunman.

Mrs. Oiyo Uno, Yoshiyuki's mother, was in the front of the store when the three men entered. 

As she started to serve one of them with a package of cigarettes he produced a revolver and said, "This is a holdup." 

THREE SHOTS The woman shouted to her family in living quarters at the rear, and the gunman leaped forward: 

He shot through curtains hanging in the doorway. The bullet hit Yoshiyuki Uno, who was sitting on a chesterfield, in the back of his left hand. 

Uno jumped up, ran through to the store and grappled with the man.

The murderer fired two more shots and Uno slumped to the floor, a bullet in his left temple and another in his left arm above the elbow. 

His slayer ran out of the store with his two companions, one of whom also handled a gun. 

The dead man's brother, Yukio Uno, 24, saw them dart north on Alberta Street, then west in a lane running parallel with Fourth Avenue. 

SHOE DROPPED Police and ambulance were summoned by Mrs. Uno. 

Detective-Inspector E. A. Pettit and Detectives L. M. Munn and Arthur White were early on the scene. 

From Mrs. Uno they took a black oxford she had picked up on the sidewalk 100 feet north of the store. They believe it dropped from one of the holdup men's feet. Inspector J. F. C. B. Vance and Detective E. B. Smith of the police science bureau took photographs of the scene and, examined blood stains on the floor, a flour sack and a curtain. 

CARTRIDGES IN CAR Discovery of an auto on Kit-silano Beach, near the foot of Whyte Avenue, gave the police the first clue to the thugs' movements. 

An unidentified citizen informed police of the car about midnight. 

Detectives Kenneth McKay and Peter Lament found footprints leading from the car to the water 200 yards away. 

They believe one of the men walked to the water to throw the gun away. 

In the auto they found four empty .22 revolver cartridges and one full cartridge. Three $2 bills were lying under the back seat. 

The car had been driven down a lane and over a sidewalk.

The detectives think the men took it to the beach to dump the revolver, then abandoned it when it became firmly lodged in the sand.

YOUNG BANDIT The car, a convertible cabriolet, had been reported stolen at 10 p.m. from the 500 block, Howe Street, by the owner, A. L. Hullah, 1534 Harwood Street. 

The man who shot Uno was described by the Uno family as about 31, and five feet 10 inches. He was wearing a green sweater. His gun was said to be "blue or black with a long barrel." The age of one of the other bandits was estimated at between 20 and 21. No description of the third man was available.

Two suspects picked up by Constables Ralph Booth and Lawrence McCulloch in a Hastings Street cafe were released after witnesses of the holdup at Chapman's Confectionery Store, failed to identify them. 

One of the three bandits who robbed the Chapman store brandished a revolver and another a jackknife, witnesses told Detectives Lamont and McKay. 

The leader of the trio menaced G. R. Chapman, proprietor, with the knife. 

The man took $30 from the cash drawer. 

While he was dumping the money into his pockets the man with the gun fired a shot into a shelf, breaking a soft drink bottle. 

Mrs. Winnifred Chapman, wife of the proprietor, and Mrs. C. Garnett, 2243 Columbia Street, were in the store during the holdup. They described the bandits as between 23 and 25. Two, they said, looked like brothers. 

SISTER'S STORY Haruko Uno, 22, sister of the gun victim, told The Vancouver Sun that her brother ran to the front of the store to defend his mother, after he was shot in one hand. 

"My brother tried to get the revolver from the tallest of the three bandits, and was shot in . the temple as he struggled," she said. 

The other two bandits, one of whom carried another gun, made for the door, Miss Uno recounted. 

When Uno slumped to the floor, the murder bandit also ran for the front door.

Uno's father, Kosabuko Uno, rushed from the little sitting room and knelt over his son while his mother telephoned for an ambulance. 

Miss Uno, a sister, Yaeko, 20, and a brother, Nukio, 34, were also In the rear room at the time. 

The men fled to a car which was stopped with its engine running in a lane back of the store off Alberta Street, according to witnesses. SAW BANDITS Masyoshl Sugie, of 509 West. Fourth Avenue, ran to the store with his mother, Yoshi Sugie, and his father, Shoshaku Sugie, when Mrs. Uno called to them.

"There was nothing I could do when I got in," he said laconically. "Mr. Uno was holding Yoshiyuki's head as he lay on the floor." 

M i y e k o Sugie, Masyosh’s brother, said that young Uno was a part owner of the Advance Furniture Manufacturing Company, 975 Vemon Drive. 

Mr. and Mrs. John Ellis, who live at 1943 Alberta Street, across the corner from the Uno store, told police that they heard the shooting. They looked through the front door in time to see the bandits running to their car.

Yoshiyuki Uno was born in Vancouver, and was a graduate of Fairview High School of Commerce.

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“Soldier ‘Identified’ As Man Who Fought With Slain Jap,” Vancouver Sun. February 7, 1942. Page 17. ---- ‘Think He Fired Shots’ Says Victim's Mother ---- Pte. Robert H. Hughes, 19, recently stationed at Vancouver Barracks, was positively identified Friday afternoon as the man who "grappled" with Yoshiyuki Uno, 27, on the night of January 16, when the Japanese youth was fatally shot in a $2 holdup of his father's confectionery store at 305 West Fourth Avenue.

Hughes was recognized by Mrs. Oiyo Uno, the victim's mother, at the preliminary hearing of the murder charge against Hughes and three others Floyd Berri gan, 18; William George Billamy 20, and John Petryk, 17 before Magistrate H. S. Wood In police court. 

"That's the man," Mrs. Uno asserted, pointing out Hughes among the, defendants. 

FIRST TO ENTER STORE The woman was unable to say definitely whether the shots that ' resulted in her son's death were fired by Hughes.

"But I think he's the man who fired all the shots," she declared. She said she couldn't see a gun by Hughes' hand because a show' case blocked her view.

Hughes, wearing a green sweater, was the first of three men to enter the store at about 8:25 p.m., Mrs. Uno testified. He fired a shot through the doorway curtains into the ad- joining living room, she said, as she shouted a warning to members of her family that she was being held up.

It was then that Yoshiyuki, wounded in the hand, came out of the room to struggle with Hughes, the woman stated. 

Mrs. Uno said she Wouldn't be able to recognize the other two men, one of whom pointed a gun at her. 

She identified a shoe produced by Prosecutor Evans Wasson as the one she picked up; on the sidewalk outside the store after the shooting. (According, to earlier testimony, Billamy was minus a shoe when seen later that night).

NERVOUS AND EXCITED Earlier in the hearing Eddie Ciminelli, 296 Patterson Road, Lulu Island, stated that Hughes told him on the night of the murder that he "was in a jam" because his gun had accidentally gone off when a man struggled with him as he was "taking" a store. 

An 18-year-old girl referred to as "Jackie" told the court that Hughes called for her at 9:15 p.m., January 16, to take her to a dance, and appeared "very nervous and excited." "He had been drinking," she said. 

He was wearing a green sweater, she went on, but she couldn't swear it was one shown to her by the prosecutor. 

On the way to the dance Hughes had told her there had been two holdups. 

"I asked him where they were. He said one was at Chapman's, but wouldn't tell me about the other because a man had been shot." 

Prosecutor Evans Wasson: "Have you ever seen Hughes with a gun?" 

Witness: "Yes, the Saturday before. George Billamy, Eddie Ciminelli and Bob had one." 

The prosecutor (producing a 22 revolver): "Is this it?" 

Witness: "I wouldn't swear that's the one, but it looks like it." 

The girl, under cross-examination, admitted she and Hughes had planned to be married when Hughes came of age. 

“There had been a change in our relations in the last month, but I wasn't mad at him because he was going with another girl," she said. 

TWO HAD GUN Steve Rosenchuk, whom police took into custody as a material witness when they arrested the four suspects in a West Pender Street hotel the day after the murder, said he thought the green sweater on exhibit was his.

He stated he "believed” Hughes was wearing it when he saw him at a, dance the night of the murder. 

The Tuesday before the shooting: John Petryk (whom he knew as Penchuk) and Floyd Berrigan had come into his room with a gun. 

"This looks very much like it," Rosenchuk said, examining the exhibited .22 revolver. 

He handled the gun himself on .that occasion, the witness said, and accidentally fired it into the wall, smashing a shaving glass on a shelf. The next day, Berrigan had come to his room again and fired it at a picture on the wall. 

The hearing will be resumed at 2:30 p.m. Monday.

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“Youth Further Identified at Murder Probe,” Vancouver Sun. February 10, 1942. Page 13. ---- Further identification of Pte. Robert H. Hughes, 19, as one of the men in the little confectionery store, at 305 West Fourth Avenue on January 16, when Yoshiyuki Uno, 27, son of the proprietor, was fatally shot, marked Monday afternoon's session of the preliminary hearing of the murder charge against Hughes and three other youths. 

Yukio and Yaeko Uno, brother and sister of the victim, agreed with earlier testimony of their mother, Mrs. Oiyo Uno, that Hughes was the man in a green sweater who looked through curtains into the adjoining living room and fired the first of three shots that struck the Japanese. 

The other accused youths appearing before Magistrate H. S. Wood in police court, are: Floyd Berrigon, 18; William George Billamy, 20; and John Petryk, 17. 

"That's the man, I'm positive," declared Yaeko Uno, taking the witness stand and pointing to Hughes.

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“ONE-MAN CAR HEARING IS SET,” Vancouver Province. May 19, 1942. Page 3. ---- Hearing of an appeal of Vancouver Street Railwayman's Union from a decision of the Public Utilities Commission authorizing introduction of 20 one- man street cars. was set by the Court of Appeal today for Thursday.

Senator J. W. deB. Farris, K C, appearing for the B.C.E.R. Co. Ltd. explained that the case had been referred to the court by the Lieutenant-Governor-in Council. under the Public Utilities Act. 

The court appointed June 1 for hearing an appeal of four youths from a conviction for the murder of' Yoshiyuki Uno, 27-year-old Japanese, in a store at 305 West Fourth, on January 16. The appellants are Robert Hughes, 19; William George Bil- ; lamy, Floyd Beringer, 18, and John Petryk, 17. They were sentenced by Mr. Justice Smith to be hanged on July 15. 

Appeals of Carl Edward Ortloff, 29-year-old shingle mill-worker, convicted of manslaughter at the recent Vancouver Assizes, and of Tommy Takashi Sawayama, 22 year-old Port Hammond Japanese convicted of reckless driving at the assizes, were abandoned today.