Around 7:30 PM, Hobbs and his fifteen-year-old brother Russell had made the short trip from their home on St Nicholas Ave to the Apollo Theater on 125th Street for a show, not emerging until 12.30 AM. When they stepped back onto 125th St, they saw crowds down the block at the intersection with 7th Ave, and went to investigate. They followed as police pushed the crowd north on 7th Ave. As people milled in front of a damaged auto parts store at 2150 7th Avenue near 128th Street, a police radio car pulled up, and one of the officers inside, Patrolman John McInerney got out. Here the accounts of the boys and seven Black eye-witnesses and those of the two white patrolmen diverged. Fearing that they would be beaten by the police, the boys and the others in front of the store ran up 7th Ave. When they got to 128th Street, Lloyd broke away from the group and turned west on to 128th Street. Officer John McInerney then drew his gun and shot Lloyd. McInerney claimed that the officers had seen Hobbs throw a stone through the window of an auto supply store and steal goods, and that he called on him to halt before opening fire.

Several witnesses watching events from the corner of 128th and 7th Ave testified to seeing the crowd moving up the avenue, and Hobbs rush from the crowd as police pulled up, but not any looting, any goods on Hobbs, or any call for him to halt before McInerey shot him. The storeowner's complaint to police described the store window as having been broken, and looting starting, several hours earlier, at 10 PM. After the shooting, the officers loaded Hobbs into their car and drove him to Harlem Hospital.

Russell Hobbs reported what happened to their father, <add parents at hospital> & police at hospital

Lawyer Hobbs tried several times to identify and make a complaint against the officer who had shot his son. He also appears to have gone to the MCCH: an undated statement by Hobbs in the Commission's files describes Lloyd's shooting and his failed efforts to get police to investigate the case. According to a story in the New York Amsterdam News, after enlisting Fred Moore, the former alderman and editor of the New York Age, Hobbs succeeded in getting the police to agree "they would look into the case."

Hobbs did not die until the evening of March 30, so he does not feature in the initial newspaper reports of those killed during the disorder, but instead in all seven lists of the injured, published in the New York Evening Journal, New York Post, Daily News, New York American, Home News, New York Herald Tribune, and Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Hobbs was the fourth of those killed in the disorder to die. A few hours earlier, his brother Russell testified before the first hearing of the Mayor’s Commission. While the New York Times, Daily News, New York Age, New York Amsterdam News and Afro-American referred to that testimony in reporting Hobbs' death, the New York Herald Tribune, Times Union, Home News, Daily Mirror, New York American and Chicago Defender reported the death in their stories on the hearing without mentioning Russell. <<The next week

The Grand Jury twice heard the case against McInerney. The first hearing took place on April 10, after the Mayor's Commission hearings. Russell Hobbs, both his parents, and the three eye-witnesses who testified at the MCCH hearing on April 6 testified, together with McInerney's partner, the police stenographer who recorded Lloyd's statement at the hospital, and the detective who investigated the shooting, John O'Brien and the owner of the automobile supply store. Patrolman McInerney also offered to testify, but the grand jury opted not to hear him. They dismissed the charges. The MCCH nonetheless continued to gather evidence, hearing testimony from McInerney's partner, Patrolman Watterson and Detective O'Brien, who investigated the shooting, at a hearing on April 20 marked by angry interjections from the audience, and from four additional witnesses to the shooting at a hearing on May 18. As a result of the evidence gathered by the MCCH investigation, the Assistant District Attorney presented the case to the grand jury for a second time on June 10. After hearing from the four new eye-witnesses, and from MCCH investigator James Tartar about the absence of the allegedly stolen items from police records and the Police Property Department until April 8, the grand jury again dismissed the charges without hearing from McInerney.

Notwithstanding that outcome, the MCCH gave a central place to McInerney killing Hobbs in its report on the events of the disorder, first released on August 10, 1935.

Police Commissioner Valentine's written response to the draft report on April 30 covered six typewritten pages, including sections on six cases of police brutality. He devoted only six and a half lines to the "Case of Lloyd Hobbs," significantly less than any of the other five. The killing was simply "the outcome of Hobbs burglarizing premises 2150 7th Avenue," an interpretation confirmed by the Grand Jury who, after hearing from McInerney, "exonerated him."