MOTHER TAKES LIFE OF SELF AND DAUGHTER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 402, 10 July 1928, Page 9

MOTHER TAKES LIFE OF SELF AND DAUGHTER

TRAGEDY AT HUIRANGI EVIDENCE AT INQUEST Press Association NEW PLYMOUTH, Monday. The tragedy at Huirangi on June IS, when Eleanor Emma Surrey, aged 49, and her daughter, Berys Minnie Surrey, aged 19, were found shot dead in their bedroom, was the subject of an inquiry before Mr. R. W. Tate, S.M.. coroner, to-day. The verdict was that the mother shot her daughter with a shot-gun while in a state of mental disturbance and then shot herself. Evidence showed that the husband, Mr. P. Hf. E. Surrey, in the early hours of the morning heard a muffled report and a scream. He found the bedroom door locked and on entering the room through a window found his wife on the floor and his daughter breathing her last in bed. Both had been shot through the breast. A 16-bore gun was leaning against the bed and there were two discharged cartridges on the floor. Dr. Brown said that two months previously he had treated Mrs. Surrey for high blood pressure and she had complained of insomnia and a headache. On the night of the tragedy she had told Mr. Gaulden Stevens, a young man engaged to Berys, that she had slept only one hour that week.