YOUNG WOMAN SHOT

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 81, 7 April 1931, Page 10

YOUNG WOMAN SHOT

SENSATIONAL AFFAIR

LIFE IN JEOPARDY

A MAN IN CUSTODY

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

HASTINGS, This Day.

As the outcome of a sensational shooting here :l: 1 o'clock this morning Mavis Steele Smith, aged 23, daughter of Mr. Alfred Thomas Smith, of Pakowhai road, was admitted to hospital suffering from grave wounds in the head and back allegedly caused by Herbert Frederick Nunn, aged 43, of Havelock North. It is stated to be not improbable that the girl will succumb.

Nunn appeared before Mr. T. B. M'Neil, S.M., in the Hastings Court this morning, and was formally charged with attempted murder and remanded for a week.

The accused, who is said to have a wifo and child at Wellington, is a retired man of comfortable means, and a well-known identity here. It appears that the girl, who had been receiving Nuun's attentions for some time, drove home with a male friend in his ear and said "Good-night." Ho drove away, and Miss Smith had almost reached the door of the house when the shot rang out. *t is supposed that Nunn was lying waiting in the grounds till the girl returned from a party she had attended, and which he had not. Tho parents heard the shot, which was fired from an ordinary shotgun. They found the girl lying four paces from the, house, parts of which had been struck by the shot. She was semi-conscious, but was able to utter Nunn's name.

Senior-Sergeant Carroll and Detective Farquharson arrested Nunn several hours later at his house at Havelock North.

Nunn is a quiet man who has been working for some weeks as a voluntary clerk in connection with the earthquake relief work.