SUICIDE WHILE ASLEEP

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 89, 13 April 1916, Page 2

SUICIDE WHILE ASLEEP

NEW YORK, January 12. Two persons killed themselves yesterday apparently while asleep. Dr. Arthur L. Reeve, a prominent resident of Brooklyn, suffering from nightmare and possibly dreaming of a danger from which he could not escape, shot himself ill the head. The doctor, who was a member of the Crescent Athletic. Club and other organisations, shot himself while in bed at his home. The police called his death suicide, but Mrs. Reeve declared her husband had a nightmare, provoked probably by indigestion. They had a hearty supper of roast duck just before retiring, she said. During the night Dr. Reeve rose, and as he walked blindly and purposely round the room ac struck his head against a door, hurting rimself. He fell' into a troubled sleep again.. About 7 a.m. Mrs. Reeve was awakened by a pistol-shot. She sprang from ,bed. Her. husband lay dying with n bullet in his head. His right hand grasped the revolver lie always kept under his pillow. Mrs. Reeve vowed their life was happy and that the doctor had no cause to kill himself. As Mr. Luther McGilivray awoke in his apartment his daughter Alice, aged 27. sprang across his bed and leaped from an open window. He seized her nightgown, but its frail material tore, and Miss McGilivray fell. The police reported the case as a suicide, but the coroner's physician agreed with Mr. McGillivray that the young woman’s death must have been accidental. She had no reason to take her life, and her father bdlieved firmly site was walking in her sleep when she took the fatal leap.