STRANGE MISHAP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 September 1938, Page 7

STRANGE MISHAP

MAN SHOOTS HIMSELF WITHOUT KNOWING. CONCLUSION OF THE POLICE. Criminal Investigation Bureau men, who were hurried by 'plane to the country to Coonabarabran, New South Wales, to investigate a suspected murder, are now satisfied that the dead man shot himself in the head without knowing that he had done so, and lived for three months after the accident. Incredible as it may seem that a man could do this, they say that it is not the first case of its kind in detective annals. Three months ago, George Allan Saisell, aged 28, of Coonabarabran, a farm hand, was found unconscious in his room. The radio was switched on, and no unusual sound had been heard from his room. When he was examined at the local hospital, the only mark on him was a bruise on the side of the head. It was presumed that he had fallen against, or been struck by, something blunt, and he was treated for a probable fracture of the skull. He was unconscious for 12 days, and when he seemed to have recovered, was discharged. Then it was found that his injury had had a remarkable effect on his sight. Things he thought were on his left were on his right, and vice versa, and he kept walking into them. So he was brought to St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney for examination with X-rays. To the amazement of the doctors, the X-rays revealed a bullet in the back of his head, and they were even more surprised when Saisell, when they ic’d him of it, said he did not know anything about it and refused to believe them. The bullet was in such a position that the surgeons could not operate, and Saisell died. The post-mortem revealed that the bullet had probably entered the side of the head, where the bruise had been noticed, and embedded itself in the base of the skull. The detectives who went to Coonabarabran learnt that Saisell was a very quiet type of countryman, who had lived and worked in the one district all his life, aiid had not one enemy. When they were reconstructing the scene in Saisell’s room, it was recalled that a .22 rifle had been found on the floor near the spot where Saisell had been found lying. A discharged shell was found in the weapon. The detectives concluded from these and other facts that Saisell had accidentally shot himself while cleaning his rifle. Ballistic tests in Sydney confirmed the theory, and X-ray examination of the flattened bullet from Saisell’s brain also agreed with it. So passes on record the case of a man who shot himself in the brain without knowing that he had done so, and lived for three months with a bullet in his head.