SHOT BY FIANCE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XVII, Issue 1647, 11 March 1922, Page 5

SHOT BY FIANCE.

A FATAL PISTOL JOKE. GIRL SHOT DEAD. London, February 4. A girl has been accidentally shot dead by her fiance in York. Miss Ada Cooper, 23, had been spending a holiday at the home in Acornb Road of the parents of her fiance, Mr .Lewis Cocker, 25, a woodwork instructor, of Monlon, Lancashire. The couple were packing their trunks in preparation for leaving the house when Cocker took out of a box an automatic pistol which had not been touched since he was demobilised more than two years ago. Not knowing that it was loaded, he pointed it jokingly at the girl. When she protested he put his left arm round her neck to kiss her. The pistol, which was still in his right hand, went off. The bullet entered the girl’s breast and passed through her body, lodging in a trunk behind. She was taken to hospital, but died a-Mew hours later.

0|“lf the tragedy we have been investigating does not drive into the minds of people the folly of pointing at others a pistol not knowing it is loaded, nothing I can say will,” said Mr Wood, the York coroner, at the inquest. A verdict of accidental death was returned.