“Cafe Owner’s Blow Against Aggressor Justified By Court,” Toronto Globe. January 8, 1930. Page 01. ---- Judge Coughlin Dismisses Charge Arising From Restaurant Affray ---- YOUTHS’ STORY CRITICIZED ---- Depicts Fight Like That Between Wooden Dolls, Bench Comments ---- (Special Despatch to The Globe.) St. Thomas, Jan. 7 - Holding that the accused was justified in employing force, and that the blows he dealt with an iron poker were to prevent further aggression, Judge J. J. Coughlin of Windsor, in Elgin County Court, this evening dismissed a charge of assault causing bodily harm preferred against Musa Shakir, cafe proprietor. The case was an aftermath of a stabbing affray in the kitchen of the White Palace Cafe on March 31, 1929 (Easter Sunday) in which, it is alleged, Albert N. Westaway, young railroader and athlete, received fatal wounds.
Sherif Rakip, diminutive Albanian chef, is in the county jail, charged with the murder of Westaway. He was tried at the Assizes last October, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict. His second trial is set for April, Musa Shakir, his employer, was charged today with assaulting Fred Thayer, one of Westaway’s three companions, in the cafe kitchen. Morley Fox, now of Wallaceburg, and Harry Smith, city, were the other two. They gave substantially the same evidence against Shakir today that they gave at the trial of Rakip, insisting that the chef was the aggressor, and that they did nothing to cause the alleged use of a knife against Westaway. They admitted that they had been drinking intoxicants before gong to the cafe for sandwiches and coffee.
