BANDIT SHOT.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 2 October 1925, Page 5

BANDIT SHOT.

SICK GIRL’S REVENGE. A ROMANTIC STORY. ,1 GABLE—PRESi. ASSOCIATION—COPY EIGHT LONDON, Oct. 1. A romantic story was unfolded during the. trial of Mercia Carnicia, who during the progress of a play at a Vienna theatre last- May fired five shots with a revolver and killed Todor Panizza,, ivho was sitting in front of her. Another man and a woman were seriously wounded.

Spectators at the High Court were spellbound while the facts were being disclosed, says the Vienna correspondent of the Daily Express. Carnicia is a young, beautiful and exquisitely-dressed Bulgarian girl, but iS dying of consumption. She did not defend herself, admitting that she sought the friendship of the man and murdered him in order to avenge her country. The dead man was a well-known Macedonian bandit, who treacherous shot Boris Saratoff, the Bulgarian politician, while Saratoff was bidding him adieu on the doorstep of Saratoff’s house.

Carnicia, with the aid of friends, planned to revenge Saratoff by killing Panizza in similar circumstances. She got herself invited to dinner at Panizza’s house on May 8, but was unable to carry out her plan, so she followed him to the opera house, where she hired the adjoining box. She fired shots into Panizza’s neck while lie was watching Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt.” When, arrested Carnicia was found to be desperately ill with tuberculosis. She was taken to a sanatorium and with difficulty was brought to trial.

The prosecution states that she was the tool of the Bulgarian Government, and she is as venerated in Bulgaria as Charlotte Corday is in France. The opening of the trial tc-day was delayed for three hours while the spectators were searched for bombs, the .army authorities fearing that an attempt at rescue would be made.

Calmly pleading guilty, Carnicia accused Panizza of accepting bribes from Servia. She said that as Panizza always had a powerful bodyguard, she was obliged to become a friend of the family, but the wounding of Panizza’s wife was inadvertent.