FATAL SHOOTING ACCIDENT.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXIL, Issue 7302, 10 June 1895, Page 3

FATAL SHOOTING ACCIDENT.

Wellington, to-day. A sad case of accidental shooting happened ab Wainui, Omata district yesterday morning. A young man named Herbert Palmer, aged 27, a clerk in the Circulation Branch of the General Post Office Wellington, was out pigeon shooting with his brother, and two boys. Herbert fired and brought down a pigeon and rested the gun against hi« 'high, while he put it in a bag. While doing Ms is he heard a flutter in a tree above, an.. snatched his gun to have a shot. As he caught hold of it, it went off, and he received the charge in the left thigh, the shot blowing a hole clean through the poor fellow, who , bled to death in a few minutes, being fully conscious, almost up to the last, thab the wound was fatal. The body was brought into the Hutt. Palmer had only recently returned from Triseo, where he had gone for a trip as mail agent. Later.— Palmer was very well known in athletic circles as a member of the Star Boating Club. He had been a member of several winning regatta crews at Christchurch, Picton, and Nelson, and was one of the most popular men in the shed. He was also a prominent member of the Wellington Harriers, and of the Wellington Amateur Athletic Society. He had several good records as a long •£- distance runner ; was a single man, and it**** -"esided with his widowed mother here.