DEATH OF A GIRL

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 34, 9 August 1934, Page 11

DEATH OF A GIRL

SHOT BY A RABBITER

MISTAKEN FOR ANIMAL!

The tragedy of a girl who was shot dead through the head by a bullet from a sporting rifle alleged to have been, fired by a man who mistook her head for a rabbit, has been revealed' at Great Oakley, near Harwich, says the "Dailfl Mail." She was Ethel Maud Harvey, aged 22» of Oakley, employed at the Great Oak* ley Explosives and Chemical • Works'^ and she was seated with her fiance un» der an oak tree. '. . . The following week she was to hay* been a bridesmaid at her elder sister* wedding. After placing flowers on her mother'% grave in Oakley Churchyard she had> gone for a walk through the fields in the twilight with Mr. Stanley Walker, a chemist • also employed at the explosives works, to whom she had become engaged only recently. They sat down near a hedge at Bed House Farm, unaware that four-young men were out rabbiting in the adjacent fields. "Suddenly I heard the crack of a rifle and the scream of a bullet," Mr. Walker told a .reporter. ~, "Instantly, Etlfol fell .towards me, with a wound in her' temple., She did not speak, and I, saw she was dying." . . i "1 stood up and about fifty yards away I saw four men. One had a rifle. I shouted and they ran towards us, but Ethel was then dead." The four men out rilbbiting wcie ( Hugh Darby, aged . 35, son of' the owner of Bed Houso Farm, his brother, S. A. Darby, and two friends, It. H. Youngman and E. D. Youngman, both of White House Farm, Manninglree. Hugh Darby, who Jiad only recently returned from a. visit ,tp, Australia, said: "I had tho only gun.' I was crossing a meadow, when, near a hedge, I saw what I took to be a rabbit. I shot, and immedaitcly <a:man got up- and shouted. iii- •.•.■< • "We .ill ran over and ;I saw, Miss Harvey lying, dead." She.had dark brown hair, and was' wearing - a tightfitting hut of' similar colour.I"'' Miss' Ida, Harvey, the dead girl's sister, said: "Just Before- Ethel went out we were making plans for my wedding' tomorrow week, and looking at tho material for our clothes." Ethel Harvey was very p.opular in the village and at tho works. She looked after her mother at home until Ihc Litter's death last January. Th'ea she and her sistfr wont into lodgings. More beer i» being turned out- in Ensland. The breweries made six barrels in year-for every five in March,