GIRL SHOT DEAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 181, 1 August 1936, Page 4 (Supplement)

GIRL SHOT DEAD.

REJECTED LOVER'S ACT. ( DIES IN MOTHER'S ARMS. Mrs. Abbott, mother of four daughters, was preparing the mid-day meal in her little cottage at Old Highway, Rye Park, Herts. Her youngest daughter, Elsie, was in the front room, talking with a rejected lover. There was the sound of three shots. A minute later Elsie Abbott lay dying in her mother's ar*iis. Then two more shots. The man, James Richardson, aged 22, had turned the revolver on himself. He also died. Until a few weeks previously Miss Abbott, cashier in the Waltham Cross cinema, was engaged to Richardson, who lived with his mother in Burleigh road, Waltham Cross, six miles away. She broke off the engagement. Richardson, heart-broken, made repeated attempts to persuade her to change her mind. She refused. Mother Eye-Witness. This is what happened, as told by another sister, Mrs. E. C. Hoad, who lives a few hundred yards away: "My mother and sister heard Richardson implore Elsie to go back to him. Elsie said, 'No, Jimmy,' and was walking out of the room. " Then my sister, Ivy, heard a scream. She rushed, to the front room and saw Richardson with a revolver in his hand. He held it up and fired three times at Elsie." "Ivy ran to her sister, to support her. Mother rushed into the room and took Elsie in her arms. She saw Richardson holding the revolver with his head down, close to his body. He fired two shots and collapsed." Herbert Abbott, the father, arrived home a few moments later.