SUICIDE OF SCHOOLBOY

Taranaki Daily News, 29 March 1933, Page 9

SUICIDE OF SCHOOLBOY

TRAGEDY IN ROTORUA HOME STATE OF MENTAL DEPRESSION QUARREL BETWEEN PARENTS. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Rotorua, Last Night. A verdict of suicide while in a depressed mental condition was returned by the coroner, Mr. S. L. Paterson, S.M., following an inquest to-day into the circumstances of the death of Patrick Burghan, a 15-year-old high school boy who was found shot with a rifle beside him in a room of his home on February 13. . Evidence was given by Leslie Taylor Clarke that on the night of the tragedy when passing the boy’s home he heard a violent domestic quarrel between the boy’s mother and his stepfather. The stepfather, F. B. K.admitted, the quarrel and said he left the house for a period. He had just returned when he ’heard a shot and found the boy shot dead with a rifle beside him. He said the boy had interfered in the quarrel. Witness resented this but did not consider the quarrel a serious matter. In returning the verdict the coroner said he was not satisfied with the stepfather’s evidence as to the quarrel and that he considered the boy’s state of mental depression was aggravated by this! disturbance. Things had been said during the quarrel which should never have been said by a husband to his wife, and in his opinion this affected the boy, who, the evidence showed, had a sensitive nature.