A SHOOTING SENSATION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 438, 24 September 1908, Page 3

A SHOOTING SENSATION.

♦ At midnight last Sunday two men cycling home past Cranmer Square, Christchurch, heard groans from the side of a tree near the footpath. On alighting they found a young man lying on the grass in great agony. He complained that he had been shot by a man whom he could not identify. One of the men (Baggs) saw that the wounded man’s vest, near the heart, was smouldering near the bullet-hole. He at once extinguished it, and the other man (Hornibrook) called the police ambulance and Dr. Irving.

The young man injured gave the name of Charles Briginton, and his story was that he lived with his mother in Peterborough Street. He had gone to Cranmer Square to meet a young man, but could not say who he was. While sitting on the end of the bench waiting for the man he expected, another man, wearing blue goggles, came up from behind, and accosted him. After a question as to who he was waiting for, the man with the goggles shot Briginton, from benind, but the wound is plainly visible in the breast. Search in the vicinity resulted in a box of 50 cartridges, from which five had been taken, being found. The missing cartridges are accounted for being found in a revolver picked up a few yards off. One cartridge had been fired, and three others had apparently missed fire.. Briginton was wearing a coat and greatcoat, but neither were touched by the bullet. Dr Irving said the bullet had glanced off a rib, otherwise death would have immediately followed. Briginton was taken to the hospital, and is not expected to live. The story told by him is doubted, and the whole thing points to insanity and suicide. Briginton admits he shot himself, adding that the story of the man with the green goggles was untrue.