RAIN OF BULLETS

Hokitika Guardian, 28 October 1931, Page 6

RAIN OF BULLETS

GANGSTERS AND POLICE. NEW YORK STREET FIGHT. ’NEW YORK, September 4. Six deaths and thirteen wounded—two of them so badly that they are unlikely to survive. This was the appalling casualty list attending one of the most sensational running fights between police and bandits recorded in the history of the United States. Three hundred shots were fired during their one ond a half hour chase, . through more than ten miles of the busy streets of New York on Friday evening. Of the dead two are policemen, .and one a baby girl, Gloria Lopez, only three and a half years old, who died of her wounds yesterday. Two of the bandits, Martin Bachorik, described as a plumber, and John Prechti, a printer, both nineteen years of age, were shot down with the driver of their car. All but three of the thirteen injured were innocent bystanders. The affair started with a hold-up by the bandits of a motor-car containing wages for the employees of a fur-dying works. In the car was a constable, as well as the company’s cashier. The bandits shot the constable dead, seized the cash, amounting to about LIOOO, and tried to get away in the commandeered car. ORDERS TO SHOOT.

The alarm was given, and the police, whose orders are to shoot bandits at sight, followed-in another 1 car, firing at their quarry as rapidly as they were able as they sped through the streets. Gloria Lopez was in her mother’s lap iii the family Ford car when buckshot smashed the windscreen and buried itself .in her face. Her mother, who is expecting another child, was cut by Hying glass, as was her father, John I.opez, a fireman. The latter will lose the sight of one eye, and possibly both. The chase was the fiercest and most amazing New York ever witnessed. Three of the wounded, including ’James Giordino, a thirteen-year-old messenger boy, who was shot from his bicycle ; a motor-cycle policeman, who fractured his skull by a collision with a lorry ; and Ruben Katz, a taxi-cab driver, who was commandeered by the policeman, arc. in a critical condition. Two will probably die before to-morrow. Many of the stream bullets went wide into shop windows. The nineteen-year-old bandits were shot through and gasping in death cop v ids' on s when their cur was finally halted. In New York to-day the police authorities conferred with the Federal officials ~-regarding- a new drive upon criminals, and police holidays have been cancelled. The two slain constables will receive inspectors’ funerals, and it heir widows w-i 11 receive liberal pensions. MEETING OF CITIZENS. To-night in Central Park, New York, a mass meeting of citizens was held to urge the authorities to renewed activity in the war upon crime and racketeering. Air Bainbridge Colby, an Undersecretary of State in President Wilson’s Administration, presided. Pie spoke of the present as “one oF the worst crises oi lawlessness in American history,’ and declared quite candidly that if the rank and file of the American people do not enlist in a campaign or reform, American institutions and ideals may rot and die. There is a feeling, he says, amongst the public, that the police have been worsted in the battle with .‘he constantly rising tide of crime. The time has arrived, he declared, to remedy 'the evils of city government.