ACCIDENTS AND FATALITIES

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2580, 14 August 1909, Page 5

ACCIDENTS AND FATALITIES

A MAN BURNED TO DEATH. AUCKLAND, August 13. James O’Keefe has been burned to death in a whare at Kumeu. A man who saw the whare ablaze tried to force the door open, but failed, the place being completely demolished. O’Keefe’s remains were subsequently found.

FOUND DEAD IN BED. PALMERSTON .V, August 13. Wililam Rockshrow, aged 28. son of a well-known Palmerston old settler, was found dead in bed at his parents’ residence to-day. He had been very despondent of late, and had not been sleeping. Death resulted from an opiate of some kind. It is understood that the deceased, who wps formerly in the Wellington Post Office and was in South Africa with the seventh contingent, had annoueed to his friends tiiat he was tired of life, and left a letter for his father. He was a particularly handsome man.

A SAD AFFAIR—BOY ACCIDENT- . ALLY SHOOTS HIS MOTHER.

CHRISTCHURCH, August 13. At 2.30 this-* afternoon, a boy named Thomas Crosbery, about 15 years of ago, fatally shot his mother with a pea nfio. It appears that Mrs. Crosbery had occasion to reprimand the boy for some trivial duty he omitted to perform, and the boy too'k up the pea rifle, and, pointing it at his mother, said. “I’ll shoot you.” The weapon went off, and the bullet entered the right cheek, worked downwards and out of her left jaw. Assistance was forthcoming, and the injured lady was removed to the hospital unconscious, where she died an hour and a half later. The boy explained to the police that he forgot' lie had inserted a cartridge in the weapon in the morning for the purpose of shooting sparrows, and had also pointed the rifle at his -married sister the night before, and playfully said he would shoot her.

DEATH THROUGH COLLISION WITH AMBULANCE VAN.

This morning a cabman named Tlios. Mann, residing on tbe rerry Road, was driving back from the Metropolitan Trotting Club’s grounds at Addington, when his vehicle came into collision with, the St. John Ambulance Association’s van. Mann was thrown from his seat, falling to the ground, and he was picked up suffering from serious injuries to his head. The ambulance van conveyed him to the Christchurch hospital, where lie died about an hour and a. half after his admission. FARMER FOUND DEAD.

ASHBURTON, August 13

Win. Rust-on, a farmer residing at Springfield, was found dead in a paddock yesterday afternoon. Deceased was 50 years of age-, and married.