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Morris Werner assaulted
Werner was attacked early in the disorder, when it was still centered on Kress’ store. While the largest crowd was at the other end of the block, at 125th Street and 8th Avenue, crowds had been moving along the street. At least three other white men alleged they had been attacked by Black men around this time: William Kitlitz in front of Kress’ store, Maurice Spellman at 125th St and 8th Avenue, and Timothy Murphy a few blocks further west. All these men lived west of Harlem, relatively close to where they were attacked, so were likely regular visitors to 125th Street, to shop, seek entertainment or access public transport, on this evening caught up in the disorder. The area around 125th St and 7th Avenue would continue to be the location of assaults on white individuals for at least the next three hours, with three men and two women targeted.
The use of a knife in this assault was unusual; only one other of the fifty-four assaults in the disorder involved a stabbing, the attack on Edward Genest, distinguishing this violence from what occurred at other times. In the rest of 1935, knives were a favored weapon of those committing acts of violence, used in two thirds of felony assault cases.
The hospital admission record is the only evidence of the assault on Werner. No one else injured in the disorder is recorded as having been treated at that hospital, which is more than forty blocks north of the scene of the assault and Werner's home. It may be that the violence saw calls to ambulances from further afield than usual. Maurice Spellman, assaulted at around the same time was attended at a closer hospital, Sydenham Hospital at 123rd Street and Manhattan Avenue, near his home. Murphy and Kitlitz were assaulted in locations where they attracted police, who made arrests, creating legal records and helping those men appear in newspaper lists of the injured, and in Murphy’s case, newspapers stories. Werner, like Spellman, appears to have been caught up in the crowds, and to have received medical attention without attracting police attention.