LONDON VICAR SHOT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23221, 19 June 1937, Page 27

LONDON VICAR SHOT

BY FORMER CHURCHWARDEN LINGERED FOR FIVE DAYS ASSAILANT TAKES OWN LIFE, (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON, May 26. In the middle of the Coronation celebrations, London ha. been saddened by the death, from shooting, of the Rev. C. W. Sykes, vicar of St. Johns, Stamford Hill. He died five days after he had been shot in the jaw by his friend, a former church warden, who also took his own life, Alfred Stanley Kirkby, aged 26. Mr Kirkby, sen., at an inquest, said that his son had been ill and depressed and verging on a nervous breakdown. He had refused to see a doctor. He had also been worrying about money. Hopes were at one time held that the vicar would recover from his wounds. But his death was announced by the Bishop of Willesden at the Sunday evening service, from the pulpit in which tne Rev Mr Sykes had preached the week before. Few people had heard the news, which, according to one report, caused the whole congregation, men and women, to weep unrestrainedly. The identity of the man who shot him was kept secret from the vicar. Before the shooting occurred Mr Sykes was sitting, with his wife, in his dining ropm at the vicarage. A message was brought that the verger, Mr W. Longhurst, had been taken ill in the parish hall adjoining the church. The vicar went to give assistance, and was shot by Kirkby, who was hiding behind a curtain drawn across a stage. Previously three shots had been fired at Mr Longhurst. "I had," he said, " been in the hall a few minutes when a shot tang out. A voice commanded me: ‘Do not move.' After a second or so I took two steps backwards, then there was another shot, and the command was repeated. I could not see the man, but from a burst of flame when the shot was fired I could see that he was hiding behind curtains at the side of a stage. ,l *t decided to take a chance. I ducked down and ran zig-zag fashion to the door. As I reached the door there was another shot. I called passers-by in the street, and a postman came to my aid. Someone else ran to the vicarage. The postman went to the door and was shot at, but was not hit. Then the vicar came along a passageway, and before I could warn him he peered round the door into the hall. There was a shot, and he was struck in the jaw. "Three policemen, armed only with truncheons, then entered the hall. There was no trace of the man they sought until one of the policemen climbed a ladder and saw a body crouched in a corner of a loft.” The coroner's verdict on Kirkby s death was that he shot himself “ while the state of his mind was unbalanced." Mr Sykes, who from 1897 had been a Congregational minister, was ordained in the Church of England in 1924 After being an assistant curate at St. John’s, West Hendon, for four years, he was preferred to the vicarage of St. John’s, Stamford Hill.