TRAGEDY AT PIPIROA.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4375, 8 February 1922, Page 2

TRAGEDY AT PIPIROA.

WOMAN FATALLY SHOT. MAN ATTEMPTS SUICIDE. A shocking tragedy occurred at Pipiroa about three o’clock yesterday afternoon, when a man named. A. Page fatally shot a woman- named Mrs Gladys McGregor Hutchinson and then shot himself, inflicting a slight wound. It appears that a man named G. P. Wallis was painting his house, when he heard two people quarrelling in a small house on the other side of the road, and saw a man with a shotgun fire at a woman at closer, range. He then turned the gun onto himself, but only inflicted a slight'wound. The wpman was badly hurt on the right arm and face. Mr Wallis then went over, but in the meantime Page had loaded both barrels of the gun. Mrs Hutchinson got up and came towards Wallis’ house. He then went towards Page, who pointed the gun at him. Mr Wallis then sought help and went up the road and met a man named' Boswell driving a truck, and they got a shotgun and came back through a pad-, dock and went up to Page, who by this time was on the road standing be-: side the woman. Th.e woman was lying, on a bridge next to Wallis’ house. After a few moments’ persuasion they managed to get Page to throw the gun into the drain. ' Gordon Boswell states that he was going back to the wharf with an empty truck when Wallis rushed up to him and said, pointing to the shack, “That man shot that woman.” Wallis told him not to go over, because Page was still there with a loaded gun. Boswell drove a few hundred yards to Mr Foote’s hpuse and borrowed a shot-gun. He and Wallis went back through a paddock and challenged Page, > and asked him to .throw the gun in the drain. He was standing on the bridge like a soldier. Page went up as if to shoot, and both Wallis and Roswell hid in the grass. When he was not lookipg they covered him with the shot-gun and he threw his into*the drain. * Mrs Hutchinson was taken in a car to th«B Thames Hospital, but she died on the w.ay. Mrs Hutchinson was about 30 years off age and Page about 32. A child of three years lived in the house, but was unhurt.