PALMERSTON TRAGEDY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3769, 24 August 1907, Page 3

PALMERSTON TRAGEDY.

The Inquest; During the inquest touching the death of the lad Caison. who shot himself with a pistol at Palmerston, the medical evidence was that the boy, when found, exhibited all signs of severe shock and injury to the brain, due, without doubt, to a bullet-wound situated in the centre of the forehead. During the whole day he exhibited no signs of returning consciousness. His death, which occurred .about 7 o’clock, was due in great part to hemorrhage of the brain. The pistol from which the bullet was fired must have been held close to the forehead, as the impress of its muzzle was still left on the skin. One of the doctors said that the, pistol used was of a very lethal nature, he having found that it would put a bullet through d bone a quarter of an jnch thick at the distance of a foot. It was also dangerous on account of the fqct that it went off at the least touch,/ so that it was quite possible that the boy did not intend tb fife it at the time. The father of the lad said that the latter was only twelvS’ years and four months old. There , had been no ill-feeling between the boy and- his father or brothers, so that really the act could not be accounted for. A fburteen-j’car-old boy feaid he had recently sold the pistol' to deceased, also giving him ten cartridges. A box of a hundred was, subsequently purchased at an irbn- : monger’s in the town, he getting it by telling the shop assistant that he was over sixteen. The jury decided that deceased died from the effect of a pistol-shot wound, accidentally self-inflicted.