A MAN SHOT

Shannon News, 14 September 1926, Page 1

A MAN SHOT

PUZZLES POLICE BY HIS STORY BLAMES BOOTLEGGERS. Circumstances surrounding the shooting of Georges Gregoire, a French translator and teacher, in the hallway on the fifth floor of > the Johnstone building, Broadway, New York, mystified the police. Gregoire is 40 years old, and has occupied a furnished room at 1.75 Lexington .Avenue. He was shot within twenty feet of a small office he used. When taken to Bellevue Hospital with a bullet under his heart, and probably .fatally wounded, he told detectives that- he believed bootleggers shot him He also is said to have admitted that he recently wrote several letters to prohibition enforcement officials, but gave little information about the motive for his writing. A pistol was found forty feet from where ,<fiie man dropped in front of the passenger elevator, from which he had stepped but a few minutes before. It was an automatic, with one of its cartridges exploded. Two facts in the shooting puzzle the police. The weapon had been held so close to Gregoire's chest that the powder* burned holes in his coat and shirt. Then too, they found a will, signed by Gregoire leaving the contents of his> office and furnished room, and deposits in the National Bank and the East River Savings Bank, and the Garfield Safe "Deposit Bank, believed to be in Maine, to his wife and children, who live in that State. Gregoire was too weaK to press him with many questions. Detectives said that if he improved he would be questioned further. They obtained statements from two employees in the. building which only added to the mystery. Anthony Philzone, the elevator operator, said that Gregoire entered the 'building shortly after 7 o'clock and was carried -to the fifth floor. It was nothing unusual for the man to appear at his office at that hour. Philzone said. Gregoire appeared cheerful as he stepped out of the car. Philzone said he returned to ground floor and was about to make a small repair on his car when he heard a report like a shot. He decided that an automobile tyre had exploded in the street; A few minutes 1| ter the elevator , bell rang from the fifth floor. Philzone said he went up to find Nicholas de Privator ,a clearer in the building, of 2244 East Fourteenth Street, Brooklyn, standing beside Gregoire.De Privator was excited and said that he heard a shot while he was at worli two stories above. When he ran downstairs he found Gregoire lying in front of the elevator. Gregoire told him that a stranger had Shot him, De Privator said. The man had stepped out of a doorway after Philzone had started down with the elevator and fired a shot without speaking a word. The elevator operator telephoned ;to the police. Both building employees said they saw no one enter the building but Gregoire, and saw no one leave it. "Bootleggers did it," was the wounded man's first remark to the detectives. He indicated he was in too great pain to talk. Not until he neared the hospital did he volunteer the information about his informing prohibition agents. Then he said nothing more. Nobody in the building could be (found who could throw any further light on the shooting.