REMARKABLE FATALITY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17831, 12 July 1921, Page 7

REMARKABLE FATALITY.

INDIAN KILLED IN FIJI.-

TWO RICOCHETING. BULLETS. [FROM DDK OWN rvmnESFONBEXT.I SUVA (Fiji), June 28. That a man can be struck by bullets fired in an opposite direction by a person 1200 yds. away was demonstrated in a remarkable trial at Lantoka Circuit Conn, recently when a returned soldier, Lieutenant Weir, was charged with feloniously killing an Indian, Vankataeami, 60 years of age, on April 27. The oid man was walking along a tramline, when a man walking bshind him heard three shots and then saw him fall. There were two bnllet wounds, orie In the left buttock and one near the middle of the abdomen. He died later at the Lantoka Hospital. Lieutenant Weir, who « overseer of Orasa Estate and a keen rifle shot, stated that he often practised with his .303 rifle, but usually toward the bills. On this day he fired at a pigeon on a tree pc the of a derive jungle, and behind which lay a swamp. He missed the pigeon and fired twice more at it on another tree. He found out later the jungle was full of large boulder 3. He fired each time u< a direction which would have carried the bullet 900 yds. en one side of the position where the man v.as hit. The distance from where he fired to where the man was walking was at le-ant liSJOyds. He claimed that either one or two ricochets only could have caused bis ballets to bit the Indian There -.vers no other shots fired that morning but his, as several witnesses proved, sdJ the doctor said 'be bullet, or bullets, came from the grounds upwards as they hit the lodiau, showing that as least t«o ricochet.-; had occurred, and these when the bullet travelled over 1200ydr;. , Lieutenant Weir wa.« found not gnilty | aud discharged. The case caused ""srreai excitement, as the Indians at first beheeed VankaW-ami had been deliberately shotj and tried to lis© the incident for political purposes. i ~~~~'

t iSk