FATAL SHOOTING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22822, 1 September 1937, Page 19

FATAL SHOOTING

' SYDNEY BOY'S DEATH PUZZLES FOR DETECTIVES // REMARKABLE MISHAP THEORY [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT] SYDNEY, August 27 For more limn a week the fatal shooting of a nine-years-old boy in a garage at Lithgow, ahout 90 miles west of Sydney, has. baffled leading criminal investigator?in Xew South Wales. Most amazing theories, contradictions and conjectures iulve been published. The boy was Donald Bunyan. Only 10 minutes beforo his mother found him dying in the garage at the back of their home he was talking to the next-door neighbours. He must have been shot between 3.45 and 3.55 p.m., yet two neighbours who were hardly 10 yards from the garage did not hear a f hot: There were 110 signs of a weapon. A hole in the wall of the garage raised the possibility of the boy having been shot from the outside, but llio detectives decided that marks 011 his clothing proved that he had been shot at close range. Old Pistol Found At first, no weapon except a longdisused single-shot pistol in an old stove could bo found. It was some time before detectives made up their minds that this pistol had been fired. Junk and d'ebris in the garage were sifted for four days before a box of bullets was / found —by chance—in a pocket in a car in the garage. Two more days of sifting followed before someone thought of removing the car seat in a search for an empty cartridge case. The case was found among fluff on the floor boards. Then the detectives' opinions tended toward an accidental shooting in remarkable circumstances. Their reconstruction on this basis is not absolutely water-tight, but it seems more likely j than some of the wild presumptions previously made. Theory Evolved This theory is ithat Bunvan came ; home from school and began to play with the old pistol, which he had hidden there. He had about eight cartridges in the car pocket. He took one out and tried it in the breach of the pistol, but it would not fit. Putting it back he took out another bullet and / tried that in the pistol. This one also would not fit, so he began to force the cartridge into the pistol, holding the weapon close against his chest for the purpose. To hammer the cartridge into the • breach, according to the theory, he used a screwdriver, or other motoring tool, and the cartridge exploded, the bullet passing into the left side of his chest. The hammering with the tool, and not the pistol mechanism, might have caused the exjdosion. 1 Probable Actions If this theory is correct, the lad then dropped the motov-car tool back on the bench, put' the pistol back into its hiding place in'the old stove, and then 'fell down beside the old car, a few paces from the stove. Regarding - whether lie could have put the pistol in the stove after shooting himself, the detectives believe that he would have been capable of doing so. But how could the empty cartridge case have got under the scat of the car? •, . That is certainly a puzzle, but detective.* believe that either the case ejected frcm the pistol flew through . the car window, lodged on the seat, and - slid down behind it, or that the actual case has not been identified from several found among the debris. Marks on the bullet and cartridge case examined by the police ballistics' department are expected to,/substantiate the theory of a remarkable accident, and to finally dismiss all fanciful conjectures about an insoivable murder mystery.