WEDDING TRAGEDY

Evening Star, Issue 19533, 14 April 1927, Page 6

WEDDING TRAGEDY

HOWELL'S MENTAL STRESS MISTOOK HIS VICTIM JPsa United Press Association ] GISBORNE, April 14. The inquest on the victims of the Hirini street tragedy was resumed this morning. . , Henry John Langlands, continuing his evidence, stated that two firearms had been in Nowell’s room for three weeks. Nowell appeared wild and upset on the night he went out to the station to get them. Questioned by the coroner regarding the nature of Nowell’s brooding, witness said the fact that the girl was out of his reach was ever in his mind. Knowing that Nowell was of rather Eeculiar temperament, witness took im for a drive on the day of the wedding, thinking that he might make a fool of himself. Ho did not want him to know that Miss Bennett was being married.

Delivering Ills verdict, the coroner said: “I am satisfied that, while the man Nowell meant to kill, ho made a big mistake, and slew an innocent, unoffending woman. He was laboring under stress and mental agony, but it remains that he meant to slay the woman with whom he had been infatuated, and by whom he had been repulsed. Sympathy must go out to Mr Pettit and the children. *1 find that Queenie Eleanor Pettit died from gunshot wounds from a gun fired by Nowell, and that Gborge Edward Nowell died from gunshot wounds selfinflicted while suffering from a temporary mental breakdown.” [At about 8 o’clock on March 31, while Mrs Queenie Eleanor Pettit, about thirty-five _ years of age, was talking in the dining room of a friend’s house, where a wedding celebration was in progress, she was shot by Nowell, from outside the window. The police version was that Nowell intended to shoot Mrs Oman, nee Winnie Bennett.]