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Crowd at 7th Avenue & West 123rd Street
Detective Peter Naton of the 28th Precinct was closer enough to the group at West 123rd Street and 7th Avenue to allegedly hear James Pringle shout to the group, “Let's go cross the way and scale rocks at the cops, they are coming down our side of the street.” As a detective, Naton likely was not in uniform, which could have let him hear what was said. He arrested Pringle as the leader of the group, for inciting the crowd to riot, and allegedly found a rock in one of his trouser pockets. Despite that arrest, Naton reported that the crowd went on to attack several people and businesses. Although there are no reports of such attacks around this specific time, the windows of the grocery store on the northwest corner of West 123rd Street and 7th Avenue were broken sometime during the disorder. A patrolman from the 28th Precinct arrested David Bragg for breaking that window; he may have been part of the crowd on the corner around 11:15 PM. The shoe repair store directly across 7th Avenue from the grocery store was also looted sometime during the disorder. But that looting likely came an hour or more after Naton observed the crowd, the time when two other looted stores near the intersection were looted, Sarah Refkin's delicatessen at 2067 7th Avenue at 12:30 AM, and then Nicholas Peet's tailors store at 2063 7th Avenue at 1:30 AM.