BOY AND PEA RIFLE.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13979, 14 August 1909, Page 6

BOY AND PEA RIFLE.

A MOTHER KILLED. Per Press Association. CHRISTCHUHCH, August 13. At 2.30 this afternoon Thomas Crosbery, aged about 15 years, fatally shot his mother with a pea rifle. It appears that Mrs Crosbery had occasion to reprimand the boy for some trivial duty lie omitted to perform, and the boy took up the pea rifle and pointing it at his mother said —"I'll shoot you." The weapon went off and the bullet entered the woman's right cl'.eek and worked downward and out of her left jaw. Assistance was forthcoming and she was removed to the hospital unconscious, where she died an hour and a half later. The boy exnlained to the police that he forgot he had inserted a cartridge in the weaj>on in the morning for the r>urpo s -o of shooting sparrows. He had also pointed the rifle at his married sister the night before and playfully said that he would shoot lier.