FATAL WOUNDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 240, 10 October 1934, Page 7

FATAL WOUNDS.

SHOT IN STOMACH.

M. Barthou Collapses Under Chloroform.

TRAGIC SCENE IN STREET.

tUnUed P.A.—Electric Telegraph—Copyright)

(Received 1 p.m.) LONDON, October 9. M. Barthou's injuries were believed to have been confined to his arm. Chloroform was administered preparatory to an operation when hemorrhage supervened, disclosing that he was shot in the stomach, from which it was imj>ossible to extract the bullet. A transfusion of blood was unavailing, and the Minister sank rapidly and died 75 minutes after King Alexander breathed his last. General Georges received attention, but is not expected to survive. An infuriated crowd seized Kalemen and trampled him down, twisted his limfts and tried to tear him to pieces. He was thrown into a cell but was apparently already dead.

It is ascertained that he was a shopkeeper bearing a Zagreb passport, on which he entered France on September 28. The chauffeur of the Royal car said that a stout man, shabbily dressed, wrenched himself from the crowd and enacted the tragedy. The chauffeur, exhibiting torn and bleeding hands, added: "I seized the assassin by the neck. Colonel Poillet, who was riding beside the car, slashed him with his sabre. The assassin then tried to shoot himself in the mouth, but the police prevented him." Murderer Struck Down. Colonel Poillet corroborated the chauffeur's story, adding: "Though I pulled my charger round to throw the assassin from the running-board I was unable to prevent him thrusting his arm through the window and emptying his revolver at King Alexander, with whom M. Barthou and General Georges were seated. "I struck down the murderer and the chanffcur fired at him as he rolled on the. ground, from which he continued firing bullets, striking M. Berthelot, a policeman and a woman spectator. The police rushed forward as cavalrymen repelled the crowd. "Another man, possibly an accomplice, escaped" in the pandemonium following the shooting."