New Zealand's school shooting

We watch in horror when there are school shootings overseas.
New Zealand's only school shooting happened in 1923 in the tiny Coromandel settlement of Waikino, set up as a support town to gold mining in the area.
Everyone knew everyone in Waikino. And everyone knew John Christopher Higgins was a strange man. Indeed, he was often called Mad John.
He was born in Canada in 1864 and married Clarice Child in 1908 in Alberta, Canada and came to New Zealand. They leased a plot of land, building a rough home. They had livestock and John worked as a wood salesman and miner.
It would have been a hard existence.
John increasingly became paranoid. He blamed neighbours for the death of his chickens. His fences were cut and his bees stolen.
A few nights before the shooting, he found his horse dead in a paddock. He was sure someone had killed it.
Clarice and John had two sons, John Junior (called Jack) and William. Both went to the local school.
On October 19, 1923, John borrowed a horse from a local farmer to make a wood delivery.
He then went to the school. The first person he met was principal Robert Reid who immediately recognised something was wrong. He spent some time talking to John, who was holding a gun in his hand, but was unable to prevent John from shooting him.
John turned his attention to the rest of the school. In a classroom he began shooting. Teachers hid and children ran. Thirteen-year-old Kelvyn Maurice McLean was shot three times and nine-year-old Charles Alan Stewart once.
He also shot Kathleen McGarry in the leg and Alexander John Bustard - both of whom managed to escape.
By now the news was travelling and men were beginning to gather.
In the principal's office, John tried to stuff Reid’s body into a closet. He did not know Reid was pretending to be dead. (Reid survived)
By now the police were there and what happened could only be described as a shoot out with several police injured. Police managed to get inside and arrest John but what they discovered horrified them even more. John had three primed plugs of gelignite.
Police found evidence of John’s descent into madness. He cut holes in the walls of his home to watch his neighbours, spying on them with a telescope.
John was brought to trial and his madness was front and centre. Today he would have been found insane but back then a jury found him guilty of two murders and he was sentenced to death.
He always maintained he knew he was doing it but could not stop.
But a month into his imprisonment he was declared insane, his death sentence commuted and he was put into Avondale asylum where he died in 1938.
The school was burnt down a week after the shootings and his wife and two sons were taken under the care of the community who raised money to help them return to Canada. They later returned.
Why John had become so disordered was unclear, but he had spent some years mining in America and had received a head injury in an explosion which might have contributed.
John was cremated and his ashes scattered at Waikumete Cemetery.