WOUNDED GIRL ON STEP

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 649, 29 April 1929, Page 1

WOUNDED GIRL ON STEP

Farmer's Startling Discovery RIFLE LYING IN NEARBY DRAIN AT about 10.30 o'clock last evening- Mr. Edward Fahey, a farmer of Bombay, was roused by a noise at his back door. On making investigations he found a girl, aged 19, Florence Horn, stretched full-length outside the door. She had a bullet wound below the left breast.

CEVERAL curious features surround the event, and detectives are Still making inquiries. Miss Horn is now a patient in the Auckland Hospital. Her injuries are not serious. The bullet had passed through part of the body, and an operation was necessary this morning. When Mr. Fahey found the wounded girl outside his door he immediately called Dr. J. McWhirter, of Pukekohe, and the Pukekohe police. The‘girl’s injuries were attended to and the doctor ordered her removal to the Auckland Hospital. Police headquarters were communicated with, and Chief Detective Hammond went out to the scene of the accident to make further investigations.

In a drain some distance away from Mr. Fahey’s house was found a rifle from which a bullet had been discharged only a short time previously. The only marks in the vicinity were the footprints of the girl where she had walked from the drain to the house. When she was interviewed by the police this morning the girl said that she had been wounded by the accidental discharge of the rifle. Miss Horn had previously lived in the Bombay district, where she knew a number of the residents, but for some time past she had been living in Onehunga. It is said that yesterday she had borrowed the rifle to go rabbit shooting.