MID-AIR DRAMA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23107, 5 February 1937, Page 9

MID-AIR DRAMA

SHOOTING OF A PILOT ACCUSED GIVES EVIDENCE (United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) VERSAILLES, Feb. 3. (Received Feb. 4, at 5.5 p.m.) Irene Schmeder, in the course of examination, told the magistrate that she informed Lallemant in November that she was an expectant mother. Owing to the brutal manner in which he received the news, she decided to commit suicide, but changed her mind in mid-air and shot him, not intending to kill him. She and Lallemant had been intimate for some time, although she was aware that he was married. He not only broke his promise to divorce his wife and marry her, but paid attention to another woman, whose letters Schmeder found in his pocket. The case was adjourned.

A previous cable message, from Paris, read as follows:—After taking off from Villa Caublay a plane unsteadily landed in a field near Trappes, but took off again as passing motorists rushed up and found the pilot staggering about with a bullet wound in the neck. He was taken to hospital at Versailles, where he stated that his woman passenger, as the result of a love quarrel, shot him in the back. Both had quitted the machine on landing, but she reentered it and flew off.