[Editor: This untitled article, regarding the shooting of an Aborigine by a police officer, is an extract from the general news section published in The Monitor (Sydney, NSW), 18 August 1826.]
[Constable Byron]
We were surprised to learn the discharge by proclamation of Byron, constable, or acting constable, at Port Stephens; as in a conversation we had with a sawyer, a free man, lately returned from that settlement; we considered there was plenty of evidence to let the matter go on to trial, at all events.
This sawyer heard the gun go off (if we are not greatly mistaken,) — went to the place, saw Byron with a piece in his hand as though it had just been fired, with the black man dead at his feet, And on being interrogated how he came to shoot the native? he replied in an incoherent way, “he did not know!”
The sawyer’s impression was, that Byron shot the man, either by an unintentional touch of the trigger, (but which he said was scarcely creditable, because why cock it?) or, which he considered more probable, Byron was weary of his life, and had perpetrated the deed in a fit of spleen and hypochondriachism. He has been a melancholy man ever since his trial for the previous murder.
This sawyer is now in the employ of Mr. Hutchinson.
Source:
The Monitor (Sydney, NSW), 18 August 1826, p. 109 (5th page of that issue)
[Editor: Changed “acting constable” to “acting constable,” (added a comma), “sawyers” to “sawyer’s”.]
[Editor: The original text has been separated into paragraphs.]
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