FOXTON TRAGEDY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17945, 24 November 1932, Page 4

FOXTON TRAGEDY

BOY RETURNS HOME PITIFUL STORY TOLD IS HOOTING WAS ACCIDENTAL (Per Press Association.) PALMERSTON N., last night. Roy Easton, sought for by the police in connection with the shooting tragedy near Foxton, was in custody to-night. He will appear in the Levin court to-morrow. It was reported that the lad was seen at 5.30 o’clock to-night on the Toad between Foxton and the Manawatu River by a motorist, who offered him a lift, winch the lad refused. The motorist informed the Foxton police who searched without avail, but on their Teturn to Foxton they were informed that the lad had reached his home and has been seen by a doctor, who had ordered him to bed on account of his overwrought state. Constable Bagrie, of Levin, is with him overnight. Roy was located at about <5.30 o ’clock by his father. It appears that after the tragedy the lad, having seen his brother fall, was seized with panic and fled across the sandhills to the coast. There he spent Tuesday night subsisting on shellfish. To-day, he worked his way back to the road, which he reached this afternoon. TRIPPED ON A SACK

• The lad tells a fitory of what appears now to ho a pitiful accident. Tt had been ho intention to go out shooting after milking, and he desired to get finished early. The delayed arrival of hig brother John from town annoyed him, and while milking was in progress they quarrelled over this. Finally Roy said he was going shooting and left the shed. He went to the house for the shot gun and went back by way of ihe bails to tell his father and brother that they could finish the cows and feed the pigs themselves, as he had finished, but in passing be tripped on a sack and the jolt forward discharged the gun in his hands. The major portion of the charge entered a post, but a few pellets, 'unfortunately fatal ones, hit his brother, who was sitting on a stool milking. Roy said that he saw bis brother stagger off the stool and, realising the ■was hurt, became, panic stricken and ran away. His first inquiry when his father found him was whether Jack had been much hurt. The news of his brother’s death came as a severe shock to him on top of his sufferings from exposure and lack of food.