A TRAGIC END.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10112, 6 October 1910, Page 5

A TRAGIC END.

HUSBAND SHOOTS HIS WIFE OUT OF PITY. The story of how a husband, .yielding to the entreaties of his dying . wife, shot the latter to end the intense agony she was enduring as the result of an accident, comes from Calgary, iu Canada. James McDowell and his wife were making their way through the Cascade Mountains, when the woman fell from the track along which they were walking, and was dreadfully crushed. They were then at least a day's journey from the nearest habitation at which medical aid might have been procured, and the woman, mortally injured as she. was, though still conscious, implored her husband to put an end to her sufferings. McDowell naturally found it hard to bring himself to do as his wife asked, but, realising the impossibility of her surviving her grievous injuries, he took his gun and shot the dying woman. The distracted man then made his way to Calgary, where the police was informed and an inquest was held. The coroner's jury returned a verdict in accordance with the evidence, and exonerated the husband from all criminal' responsibility. McDowell has since come to New York. His nerves are completely wrecked, and the man is threatened with the. loss of his reason.