FATALLY SHOT BY SON

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 190, 11 May 1942, Page 8

FATALLY SHOT BY SON

Inquest On Alan’s Death

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) WIIANGAREI, May 9. A tragedy at Waihopo which resulted in a sixteen-year-old boy shooting his father, Steve Ulrich, a well-known settler, was the subject of an inquest at Kuitaia yesterday. The evidence Showed that Ulrich, who lived with two sons, was away all day on February 27. lie walked home, his horse having broken away. About 8 pan. the sons heard a dog barking, and saw the form of a man walking near the cowshed. The older son went to investigate, telling the younger to wait at the front of the house. The man was their father, who asked his son to catch the horse. Then thinking to play a joke on the younger son, who was unaware that his brother had been sent for the horse, the father continued with bis head down and refused to answer the challenge of the younger son, who got a gun and repeated the challenge. His father then made straight for him, and when ten yards distant the gun was fired, desperately wounding the man. The father admitted that it was all his own fault, and he and the boys were on the best of terms. There had been considerable trouble in the district, and the Ulrich , family had been kept at a tension which led the younger son to believe the approaching man had evil intentions. The coroner found that death was due to gunshot wounds caused by a shot fired by the son.