AIR RUNAWAY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22609, 23 December 1936, Page 11

AIR RUNAWAY

CRASH IN SUSSEX SHOOTING OF PILOT FRENCHWOMAN'S ACT HER ARREST ORDERED By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright (Received December 22, 8.45 p.m.) LONDON, Dec. 22 The woman who yesterday shot at and wounded Pierre Lallemant, pilot of the aeroplane in which they were flying, and who escaped in the machine after the pilot had made a forced landing near Paris, crashed at dusk at Selsey, in Sussex. The police withheld the name of the woman, which, however, was later given as Mme. Rchmeder Chapellut. She suffered shock and cute, and was attended bv a doctor and two priests. She said she had no idea that she was over England. The examining magistrate at Versailles issued a summons against her to appear for examination. It will be sent to the British Foreign Office. Later, according to official information given to the Daily Mail, the French authorities instructed the Sussex police to arrest Mme. Chapellut on a charge of attempted murder. She told her rescuers: "In the clouds I got lost. My petrol tank was emptying as I scraped down on the land close to the seashore." The smashed aeroplane lies where it fell. Mm. Chapellut is the vivacious 32-year-old wife of a rich Belgian manufacturer, aged 57, who gratified her every wish until she abandoned her social activities, shared a flat with a woman friend, and spent her spare time with Lallemant, who taught her to fly. Eventually they fell in love. Her husband, learning of his wife's infatuation, arranged for a divorce, but meanwhile Lallemant fell in love with another woman and proposed marriage to her.

According to the Paris Daily Mail Mine. Cliapellut decided to shoot her lover and kill herself in a death dive, or possibly she hoped he would lose control ai'ter sho fired, enabling them to plunge to death together. Fortunately for Lallemant, the revolver jammed after the first shot. A French woman friend of Mme. Cliapellut discloses that this is her maiden name, which she resumed when she separated from M. Schmeder.