A DOMESTIC TRAGEDY.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18220, 3 November 1924, Page 12

A DOMESTIC TRAGEDY.

HUSBAND ATTEMPTS MURDER AND SUICIDE.

(press association telegbam.) OAMARTJ, November 2. A terrible domestic tragedy occurred at Clyde street, North Oamaru, about seven o'clock this morning. John Holmes, labourer, aged sixty-eight, purchased a pea-rifle yesterday, ostensibly for the purpose of shooting birds. Early this morning he left his room and went into the room occupied by lus wife (aged forty-two) and discharged a bullet into her head behind the ear. He then went back to his own room, procured a razor, and severed his windpipe. A four-year-old boy, who was sleeping in a cot in his mother's room, was awakened by the report of the gun, and rushed screaming to alarm an elder brother, who was sleeping outside. After being shot the woman jumped through the window and staggered to a hut at the rear of the house where she told an eighteen-year-old son that his father had shot her, and asked him to go for the police and the doctor. She then collapsed on the floor. The boy ran to a neighbour's and summoned a doctor, and afterwards sent for the police. The constables could not effect an entrance through the back dooi v , but climbed through a window. They found Holmes lying on a pillow in the passage with his head against the door, bleeding profusely from a terrible gash in the throat.

He stated that he had shot his wife owing to a certain domestic trouble which he mentioned, and was sorry he had not made a job of himself. The man and woman were both removed to the Public Hospital. The woman is in a serious condition, and is not expected to recover, but the man's injuries may not prove fatal. The couple had not been living on the best of terms lately, and Holmes was suffering from kidney complaint and insomnia. The constables found! the rifle in a room occupied by Holmes, with an empty cartridge in it. They also found a razor in a pool of blood on the floor.

The woman is Holmes's second wife. She has a family of three hoys and two girls, the eldest boy being aged nineteen. They had been married about twenty years. The police found a bank book in Holmes's room, and a letter to the Public Trustee with instructions as to the disposal of his property.