GIRL SHOOTS HER FATHER.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 8734, 7 February 1907, Page 1

GIRL SHOOTS HER FATHER.

The Eev. •J, G. M’Atee, a prominent retired Lutheran clergyman, sixty-eight years of age; was shot on December .1 (says the New York correspondent of the Express) by his daughter May, a twenty-three-year-old graduate of Vassar College. The daughter was arrested, and stated that for many years her father, who drank heavily, had treated her and her mother with great cruelty. Latterly he had been violent, owing to her engagement to Mr Robert Pierce, to whom she was to have been married on the 12th December. Her father had refused to give her money for her trousseau, and on the preceding day she heard him speaking loudly to her mother about her wedding in a room down stairs. Then she heard her mother scream for help. “ The memory of years of abuse deprived mo of reason,” she told the police. “ I took my revolver downstairs, and saw my father beating my mother with a poker. I asked him to desist, but he only beat her harder. Then I lost control of myself, and took deliberate aim at his head, and fired four times.”

The minister was taken to the hospital. The doctors state he may recover. A crowd attended the court, and displayed great sympathy for the daughter. Mr Pierce, who was called as a witness, admitted buying the revolver for Miss M’Atee, and related many instances of her father’s brutality. He declared that he would marry Miss M’Atee as arranged, if he had to attend the ceremony in prison. The magistrate announced that Miss M’Atee would be allowed bail of £IOOO, whereupon there was a friendly struggle by many people in court to be allowed to guarantee the amount. The Rev. J. G. M’Atee is a man of considerable means, and has travelled a good deal in Europe and Palestine. He was minister in many fashionable parishes.