TRAGEDY ON FARM.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LI, Issue 111, 11 April 1931, Page 9

TRAGEDY ON FARM.

ELDERLY MAN DEAD. AN ARREST MADE. Per Press Association. HAMILTON, April 10. An octogenarian fanner named Arthur Rossiter was found dead at his farm <at Kaipaki this morning from a gunshot wound in his head. Reginald RliomVis Norman Rickard, aged 35, has been arrested and charged with murder. The dead man was shot through the back of the head, apparently with a single-barrelled gun, which later was recovered by the police. It is stated that Rickard had been friendly with Rossiter’s daughter, Olive, at Taurnnga, and was subsequently charged at Tauranga on April 1 with assaulting the girl. On that occasion he was remanded for medical observation at Auckland. While awaiting transfer to Auckland Rickard escaped from the lockup at Tauranga. The police had been scouring the district ever since for him, and this morning Inspector Eccles had reason to believe that he was in the neighbourhood of where Miss Rossiter’s father resided.

Inspector Eccles instructed Constables Rimmer and Forsyth, of Te Awamutu, to proceed to'Mr Rossitcr’s farm, but their arrival there was too late to avert a tragedy. On entering the farm they saw Rickard about to leave by the back door of the house. They detained him and together entered the dwelling. On reaching the kitchen they discovered a pool of blood on the floor, while the furniture around was splashed with blood. Proceeding to the bedroom they found the old man lying on the floor alongside the bed with a gaping wound at the back of the head. The body was covered with blankets. Mr Rossiter was known to have carried out the morning’s milking, and later was seen about 8 a.m. by his son. who lives in a house at the rear of the farm. From the police investigations it would seem that deceased was about to sit down to breakfast when the fatal shot was fired from behind. Pellets entered the rear of his head and emerged through the right eye, a gaping wound being blown right through the skull. There was only one shot fired. In the bedroom at the rear of that in which the dead man was found the window had been carefully covered with the blind. The front door had also been nailed up from the inside. Mr Rossiter was a very old resident of Kaipaki.