SHOOTING TRAGEDY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22565, 8 May 1935, Page 10

SHOOTING TRAGEDY

DEATH OF FATHER AND SON ACCIDENTAL DISCHARGE OF GUN (Per United Pbess Association) HASTINGS, May 7. A tragic shooting accident occurred on Ohiti Lake, a few miles from Fernhill, yesterday, when Mr Harold Smith, a well-known land agent, of Hastings, and his son, Douglas, aged 17, were both mortally wounded through the accidental discharge of a gun. They were brought Into Hastings by the Free Ambulance, and taken to the Soldiers' Memorial Hospital, where they both later succumbed—Mr Smith late in the afternoon, and his son at 11.10 p.m. Few details of the accident are available, as there were no eye-witnesses, but Mr Holz, who went out with the ambulance, states that apparently Mr Smith, in getting out of the punt, seized by the muzzle a gun lying in the punt. By some means it discharged one of the two cartridges with which it was loaded, and Douglas Smith was shot in the right side and abdomen. What happened in the next moment or two- is not clear, but it appears that the father then went to pick up the same gun, also by the muzzle, and that the second cartridge discharged, and shot him through the right chest and lung. A man who had been shooting alone on another part of the island heard cries for help, and hurriedly rowed back to the homestead to summon aid. The ambulance was unable to approach nearer than a mile and a-half to the scene of the accident, and the doctor and Mr Holz had to row in a punt to the island. After an ancesthetic had been administered to the men, they were towed back to the shore in a Maori canoe, and with the assistance of some Maoris they were then carried the mile and a-half to the ambulance. Mr Smith had been in business in Hastings as a land and commission agent for 15 years, and was married to a daughter of the late Rev. Mr Cockerill, Church of England clergyman in Hastings, and of the late Mrs Cockerill, who was killed in the earthquake in 1931. Douglas was the elder of his two sons, who were the only children of the family.