SHOCKING FAMILY TRAGEDY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 84, 13 April 1915, Page 5

SHOCKING FAMILY TRAGEDY.

MURDEROUS ATTEMPT ON WIFE AND DAUGHTER. SUICIDE OF A MADMAN. Per Press Association. Auckland, April 12. About one o'clock this imorning, a carter named J. J. Saver, residing in Bath Street, Parnell, attacked his wife and child with an axe, inflicting serious injuries on the former, and then committed suicide, taking poison. Savers, his wife and girl, aged eight years slept in the same room. Savers appears to have got an axe from the yard and made a ferocious attack on his wife, who was in bed. inflicting fearful wounds to her head and shoulder*. Either before or after, Savers evidently attacked his daughter. She has a large bruise on the head. Savers finally drank some strong corrosive poison, and lay down on the bed beside his unconscious wife.

The police were summoned by neighbours, and found Savers just dying. .Mis Savers was unconscious and bleeding terribly, hut probably her injuries will not be fatal. So far thera is nothing to suggest the motive.

ft was ascertained later that John Sayers, who went to work yesterday morning, returned home during the day, and stated he had been kicked by a horse. He showed signs of having had some drink, and a couple of bottles of beer and one half-empty bottle was found in the bedroom. A married daughter, who lived in the same house, states that Sayers, whenever he had been drinking, threatened to murder the family, and on one occasion attacked his wife with a file. The inmates of the house were awakened by heavy thuds, and the married daughter, on entering the bedroom occupied by Savers and his wife and child, found Sayers, who was scantily attired, lying on the bed unconscious. His wife was lying in a pool of blood, her head being terribly battered.

The little girl evidently received one blow on the head from the blunt part of the axe, and is not very seriouslv injured.