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James Thompson killed & Detective Nicholas Campo shot
The officers claimed that at 5:30am they interrupted Thompson looting a damaged grocery store on 8th Avenue across the street from his home. Press reports offered a variety of different accounts of what happened next. The American, Home News, Herald Tribune, and New York Post reported a gun battle between the officers and Thompson, during which he was shot in the chest and Officer Campo in the hand. The World Telegraph reported a struggle between Thompson and Campo, during which Thompson was shot; the officer then dropped his gun, causing it to go off and a bullet to hit his fingers. The Amsterdam News reported the officer’s gun went off accidentally, hitting Thompson.
The arrest report makes no mention of Thompson having a gun or struggling with the officers, merely colliding with Campo as he tried to flee the building, causing Campo’s gun to go off and injure his own fingers. As Thompson fled both officers fired at him, apparently hitting him as he stumbled down the street. Their shots also struck two white men on the opposite side of the street, wounding one, Stanley Dondoro, in the leg.
A file in the Mayor’s Commission records indicates that police investigated the shooting after the disorder. Although the World Telegraph story reported Thompson as saying at the hospital that “he was hungry, “that others were stealing, anyway,” and that he was “long out of work,” there is no record of an admission in the report of the police investigation. It does include an interview with Thompson’s aunt. She reported hearing from Thompson’s landlady that he had brought home canned goods during the disorder, with the implication that he had been looting prior to the shooting. However, she also reported that he worked at a barber’s shop, in contradiction of the admission reported in the World Telegraph. There is no record of police taking any action against the officers or of Thompson’s shooting attracting attention during the Mayor’s Commission hearings, as that of Hobbs did.