CRIME: Street Scene

Among the scrubby frame stores and dwellings of East 133rd Street in the vast, tawdry northern sector of New York City which is called The Bronx, sprawls the low brick structure of a fur dyeing factory, broad, ugly, busy. Beside it runs an alley full of old machinery. Into this alley one afternoon last week drove the factory manager with a $4,619 payroll, guarded by a policeman. Two youths stepped up to the car with drawn automatic pistols. One covered the manager, forced him out of the car, took the payroll. The other sent a bullet through the policeman’s shield into his heart.

In the manager’s car the two men sped through East 133rd Street to St. Ann’s Avenue, turned north, and continued un challenged, stared at by dwellers of the shabby neighborhood. At 149th Street they abandoned the car, changed to a taxicab, turned into Boston Post Road. At 169th Street a motorcycle policeman opened fire on them. He fell mortally wounded. A fireman picked up the police man’s revolver. He, too, was shot down. Another fireman, out driving with his wife and 4-year-old daughter, came into range. All were wounded, the child fatally. Bul lets struck three passersby.

Turning west, the bandits made their way to Park Avenue. By this time police men in commandeered taxicabs were in pursuit. Shots stopped one, wounding two policemen and the driver. The fleeing taxi crossed the Harlem River into Manhattan and made its way to Riverside Drive, leaving two more wounded pedestrians in its wake. Up Riverside Drive it roared, pursued by police taxis. At Dyckman Street, twelve miles from the holdup scene, it was stopped by a truck. Policemen riddled it with bullets and flung open the doors. Out tumbled the taxi driver, dead, and inside were two dead bandits.