The Placer Herald

MURDER AND ATTEMPT AT SUICIDE.--About 11 o'clock last night, a German named Frederick Naumann, compositor in the German Democrat office, living on the corner of Powell and Greene streets, and having a wife and two children, deliberately put a pistol to the head of his oldest child, a boy of seven years of age, and blew his brains out, killing the child almost instantly. He then put a pistol to his own head and fired, the ball penetrating in a downward direction from the top of the head, and left him in a condition from which, although still alive, he cannot possibly recover. The first alarm of this shocking affair was given by the wife and mother, who ran out into the street crying "Murder! murder! he has killed my child." A gentleman hearing the alarm ran to the police office, and on the officers hastening to the scene, the child was gasping its last and the wretched father lay weltering near it in his own gore. The child was shot, from appearances, while in bed, and the suicide of the father committed alongside of it. A younger child of some three years of age, was in the bed at the time, but escaped injury. What the motives were for this unnatural and horrible murder of his own child and the taking of his own life, are not yet known. It is supposed to be the result of insane ravings, to which it is said, he was subject at times, produced by liquor.