This tag was created by Anonymous. The last update was by Stephen Robertson.
5:30 AM to 6:00 AM
Around 5:30 AM, two detectives in another radio car patrolling Harlem streets heard breaking glass in a damaged grocery store near the southeast corner of 8th Avenue and West 127th Street. Pulling over to investigate, Detectives Nicholas Campo and Theodore Beckler drew their pistols and entered the branch of the A&P grocery chain at 2364 8th Avenue. There were several large holes in the windows and no merchandise left in the window displays in the police crime scene photographs of the store taken later. However, as was the case with many other businesses, the shelves inside the store were untouched. The noise had been made by James Thompson, who lived across 8th Avenue from the store in 301 West 127th Street. According to his landlady, the nineteen-year-old Black man had been on the streets during the disorder and he and another man had come home with “canned goods” which she was certain they had stolen. Thompson appeared to have decided to return to the streets for more food as morning approached. To get to the shelves inside, he had to break glass in one of the entrance doors.
Thompson must have heard the officers approaching, as he was in the storeroom in the rear when they entered. As Campo and Beckler moved through the store, Thompson burst out of the storeroom and ran for the entrance. He collided with Campo, causing the detective’s pistol to fire a bullet that hit two fingers on his own left hand. When Thompson got out on to the street, he ran across 8th Avenue toward his home. As the two detectives followed, they both shot at him; Campo fired twice, Beckler five times. Only one of those bullets hit Thompson, but it struck him in the chest, perforating his liver. One of the other shots hit Stanley Dondoro, a white man walking along the west side of 8th Avenue, in his left leg. A resident of Hoboken, New Jersey, Dondoro was likely on his way to work in one of Harlem’s businesses. A third bullet passed through the trousers of a man walking with Dondoro without injuring him. Campo and Beckler caught up with Thompson in front of 301 West 127th Street and arrested him. They must have called for an ambulance to take him to Harlem Hospital rather than driving him there themselves, as the patrolmen who shot Lloyd Hobbs had done, as Thompson was not admitted until 6:30 AM. He died three hours later. While he was the last of those killed in the disorder to receive their fatal injuries, James Thompson was the first to die. He was not, however, the last man police arrested.
Around ten minutes later, one block to the north, Officer Di Maio arrested a twenty-eight-year-old white chauffeur named Jean Jacquelin. The patrolman was likely in the area due to the shooting of James Thompson. Jacquelin was allegedly carrying two ladies' coats and two pairs of trousers, which is likely what led Di Maio to stop him. Unusually, he lived on West 128th Street midway between 8th and 7th Avenues, an area almost entirely populated by Black residents. Men arrested in similar circumstances earlier in the disorder were suspected of being in possession of items they had taken from businesses. The clothing Jacquelin was carrying was later identified as coming from Morris Sankin’s tailor’s store at the opposite end of West 128th Street near 7th Avenue.
The arrest of a white man was an anomalous incident on which to end the disorder. The 128 individuals arrested during the disorder included only ten white men. Four of those were Communists who had been arrested in front of Kress’ store at the very beginning of the disorder. As the legal response and the city’s investigation of the disorder began, that group of white men would occupy a prominent place in accounts of what had happened in Harlem.