SHOT A FRIEND.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1127, 31 July 1913, Page 4

SHOT A FRIEND.

END OF PRACTICAL JOKE.

As the outcome of a joke which James Eadie intended to play on a room mate, Theodore Barnett Trenuery, in Sydney, on May 22, when the latter shot Eadie with a rifle, Trennery appeared before the Sydney Police Court last week on a charge of having maliciously shot Eadie. They are both young men, and are firm friends. Eadie, who had to be led to and lifted into the witness box, is partly paralysed down the left side and is nearly blind as the result of the shooting. Eadie said he put on a black hat, then went to the door of the room he and the accused occupied. He pulled a curtain aside, put bis head in the room and remembered no more until he recovered consciousness at the hospital some days after. He considered he had acted foolishly, and never thought Trennery would shoot.

Accused said : I was alone in the house. Then I started to read, and had been reading for four or five minutes when I felt frightened, and took my rifle and put it at the side of me. It was not loaded. Ten minutes after, feeling nervous I put three cartridges in the rifle and kept it at my side. About fifteen minutee after loading the rifle I heard a noise in the yard, and picked up the rifle and held it in my hands lacing an angle at top ot the door. I was considerably frightened. The next thing I saw was a masked face at the door only the eyes showing. The rifle went off when the head appeared. I thought it was a burglar, who looked as though he would spring at me.

The charge was altered to one of maliciously wounding. Treuuery was committed tor trial.