The Bedford Gazette

A Dog Blowing a Man's Brains Out.

The Cincinnati Commercial of August 20th, tells the following :-Yesterday morning, a little before 6 o'clock, S. J. John, furniture dealer, 23 East Fourth street, residing near College Hill, arose, and opening the front door, and seeing a hawk flying about the barn, he called a servant girl, the only person about the house to bring him his gun, which she did. Having asked her if it was loaded, she said she thought not, when he requested her to go to his room and get a box of percussion caps. During the girl's absence he raised the hammer of the gun and was about to blow in the barrel, when a favorite dog came bounding towards Mr. J., his paws striking the trigger just as the weapon was raised to his face. The gun, which was loaded, with a cap on the tube, was discharged, the shot tearing off a portion of his skull and dashing out his brains. The domestic screamed, and the various members of the family sprung from their couches and rushed, agonizingly to the horrid scene. The husband and father lay dead upon the floor, his head and shoulders being across the threshold: the blood was streaming from his mangled face and head, and clotted masses of brain were dropping from the ceiling to the floor. The fatal charge tore away part of the left side of his face, striking under the eyebrow, took a somewhat oblique direction backward and perforated the skull, carrying with it almost every particle of brains in the brain pan. The left side of the upper lip and the left nostril were also burned by the ignited powder into a crisp. He must have been killed so suddenly and quickly as to have been unconscious of the least pain or even of the cause of his destruction.