Star Witness in Man’s Trial, Woman Awaits Conviction Then Ends Her Life

Apparently waiting until she could testify in the trial of the man who shot and killed her daughter a 42-year-old negro woman committed suicide this morning at the same place that her daughter had been shot in the face ago. The man who shot her daughter was convicted of manslaughter in court last week and was sentenced to serve three years in the state penitentiary.

The woman, Annie J. Mines, shot herself at 8:30 this morning with a shotgun in the bedroom of her combination store and living quarters in the front yard of which her daughter had been shot in the face with a shotgun 18 miles from Columbia on the Blaney Road just recently.

The daughter, Geneva Jones, 17, according to the testimony coming out in the trial last week, was told to look down the gun barrel “to her death” by Samuel Sumter. When she put her face in front of the gun barrel it went off and killed her instantly. Sumter claimed that the discharge was an accident.

The mother of the girl was one of the most important witnesses for the state in the conviction of Sumter. Dressed in flowing moaning dress she told her story on the stand.

Coroner John A. Sargeant, who investigated the suicide this morning, said that he was told that she had said since her daughter’s death that the grief was more than she could stand and had several times threatened to kill herself.

The woman, Coroner Sergeant said, sat on the edge of her bed and shot herself in the throat with a single barrel shotgun, loaded with birdshot. The discharge completely took off the left side of her head.

Earlier in the morning she had complained to her son, Sam Jones, of feeling bad, and had repeated her threat to kill herself. The shot was heard by Martha Jones, daughter-in-law, but the woman was dead when she reached her.