The Ouachita Telegraph - Green Atkins' Daughter Accidentally Shoots Sister

Date: Oct 2000
Submitted by: Lora Peppers <lpeppers@ouachita.lib.la.us>



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The Ouachita Telegraph
Saturday, July 14, 1888
Page 3, Column 1

 Homer Journal:  A very sad accident occurred in ward six last Thursday.  It
seems that on Wednesday a peddler was passing the house of Mr. Green Atkins.
  Near the house his horse was taken sick and Mr. Atkins invited him to his
house.  The peddler had a pistol which he laid upon the mantlepiece after
removing the cartridges.  The little girl of Mr. Atkins, 12 years old, saw
the pistol, which was a self cocker, and amused herself snapping it.  The
next morning the peddler replaced the cartridges in the pistol and laid it
down somewhere about the house and the little girl, seeing it again, took it
up and pointing it at an older sister pulled the trigger, when the pistol
fired, killing the girl’s sister at once.  The girl who accidentally did the
shooting is almost crazy with grief.  The older sister killed, we learn, was
a most excellent girl and was as a mother to the younger children.

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