HEARD OVER THE TELEPHONE

Evening Star, Issue 18044, 11 August 1922, Page 2

HEARD OVER THE TELEPHONE

“HE 'SHOT ME." NEW YORK, June 15. “My’God, he allot me.” When the light flashed on the switchboard at an exchange an. operator about to the subscriber for a number was startled (says the New York correspondent of the ‘ Central Nows ’) to hear the ejaculation quoted above, and the moans of a, woman who appeared to bo in agony. The operator immediately made a connection with police headquarters ,and a detective. heard the same voice. A minute later a number of officers were on their way to the house from which the cry had como. It was that of Mrs Amy Pettit, a pretty young widow, who lives in St. Anne’s avenue, Richmond Hill, near Eew' Gardens. The house wag • surrounded, and when a police offlpa entered ho found Mrs Pettit huddled in a chair.

She was asked who shot her, and sho replied that sho did not know, but thought it was a burglar. She had been for a walk, and was about to enter her room, when a mail sprang at her from a corner of thehall and shot her. Sho was taken to hospital, where her wound was treated; but when an attempt was made to get a description of the assailant she became hysterical.

The doctors who attended her said it was the strangest wound not self-inflicted that they had treated. She indignantly denied that sho had shot herself, The wound was under the left arm.

No lock had been tampered with at her home, and no weapon was found. The telephone receiver was off the hook. No ono in the vicinity had heard the sound of a shot. There was no indication of an attempted burglary; 'Mrs Pettit is reported to be rich, and lives with her parents, but they were away from home at the lime she was shot.