BOY ACCIDENTALLY
KILLS STEPSISTER.
Carries Dying Child Into House
and Runs Mile and a Half
for a Doctor.
Sobbing with grief and carrying in his arms the unconscious form of Elizabeth Baumgarten, his little sister, who was bleeding form a bullet hole in her forehead, Willam Mudder, 16 years old, staggered into the home of his stepfather, Marten Baumgarten, Kansas City, Kas., yesterday afternoon.
Baumgarten, a carpenter, sat by the side of his wife, who is confined to her bed with a 2-weeks-old baby by her side in the bedroom of their little home. A number of old acquaintances were also in the room. It was while they were talking and laughing the boy entered with his burden.
"I didn't mean to do it papa," he shrieked. He hurriedly explained that he had shot the little girl accidentally with a .22-caliber target rifle. Bolting from the room, the boy ran a mile and a half to the office of Dr. David W. Thompson at Nineteenth street and Quindaro boulevard.
"Doctor, I shot my little sister accidentally, and I want you to come to her quick," he shouted as he entered the doctor's office.
Dr. Thompson hurried with the boy to the home. The bullet had entered the middle of the child's forehead and lodged near the base of the brain. She died about twenty minutes after the doctor arrived. Dr. Thompson notified Dr. J. A. Davis, coroner of Wyandotte county, who decided that an autopsy would be unnecessary.
The Mudder lad works during the week for his aunt, Mrs. John Smith, who runs a grocery at Twenty-seventh street and Bell avenue in Kansas City, Mo. He went home yesterday and began a romp with his four brothers and three stepsisters. He took a little target rifle belonging to the step father and, calling the children, started out in the back yard to shoot at a mark. All seven of the children walked down the back stairs from the porch. Elizabeth, 4 years old, was the last. Just as she reached the bottom step, by some unknown means which the lad himself cannot explain, the gun was discharged, the bullet entering the little girl's forehead.
Mrs. Baumgarten was prostrated over the little girl's death. The father, too, was grief-stricken. The Mudder boy was affected more than either. He could not be comforted and paced the rooms of the house back and forth. Dr. Thompson said last night that the boy was nearly crazed when he came to his office.
Martin Baumgarten, the boy's stepfather, said last night that William was absolutely blameless. "I am confident that the shooting was purely accidental," he said. "The boy loved his little stepsister just the same as if she had been his own sister. It was just one of those unfortunate, unavoidable accidents.
Funeral services for the little girl will be held tomorrow morning at the Church of the Blessed Sacramet in Chelsea place. Burial will be in St. John's cemetery.
