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Ralph Sirico's shoe repair shop looted
Saunders offered a different account than Duross, according to the Probation Department investigation report. He lived nearby, in a furnished room at 1967 7th Avenue a block south of the store, with Anna Gregory. Around midnight, Saunders left home to buy cigarettes. Walking toward a crowd in front of Sirico's store, he saw shoes and hats being thrown through the broken window on to the street, where people in the crowd were picking them up. While there are few accounts of goods being thrown into the street, there are descriptions of merchandise spread over sidewalks and streets, suggesting that some of those who attacked goods destroyed or distributed goods in this manner, rather than taking them themselves. Saunders claimed he followed the lead of those around him, and picked up a pair of shoes, cutting his hand on glass on the street in the process, and headed home. At that point Duross arrested him. Saunders denied having been drinking; the detective said Saunders did not have a pair of shoes in his hands when arrested.
In fact, it seems that Duross did not find anything from the store in Saunders' possession, as none of stolen goods were recovered, according to the Probation Department investigation report. Nonetheless, Saunders appears to have been charged with taking all the goods that the report recorded Sirico said had been stolen: "18 or 20 hats which had been cleaned and blocked by him; about 25 pair of shoes which he had repaired; 5 or 6 pairs of unfinished shoes; one dozen leather soles; two and a half dozen rubber heels and a quantity of polish and shoe laces," with a total value he estimated as $66.75. While the District Attorney's case file is missing, the Probation Department investigation report summarizes the indictment against Saunders as accusing him of taking merchandise worth $66.75. The two newspaper reports of the case are less specific, with both the Home News and Daily Worker reporting the charge as stealing "several pairs of shoes."
Police charged Saunders with burglary. He was one of those indicted by Dodge's grand jury before the Magistrate decided his case. On April 1, he pled guilty to petit larceny. In other cases after the disorder in which defendants did not have goods in their possession when arrested, a district attorney generally offered a plea bargain for a different charge, unlawful entry. On April 30, Judge Nott gave him a suspended sentence and placed him on "indefinite" probation on the condition he go to Savannah to live with his sister (the 28th Precinct Police Blotter recorded only the suspended sentence, not the probation). Saunders spent the maximum period of three years under supervision.
Sirico had insurance that paid the cost of replacing his store windows. The business was included in the MCCH Business survey in the second half of 1935, and Sirico was still operating the store when he registered for the draft in April 1942, giving his first name as Raffaele. He had arrived in New York City in 1919. Sirico appears likely to have been in business in Harlem by the time of the 1930 census, when the census enumerator recorded that he worked in a shop. At that time he lived at 293 East 155th Street in the Bronx, with his wife and four children aged between eight years and fifteen months.
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This page references:
- "Transcripts of Police Blotter - Precinct 28, March 19 & 20, 1935," MCCH - Juvenile Delinquency - 1935-36, Departmental Correspondence. Box 34, Folder 1 (Roll 171), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945.
- "Police Guard Against New Uprising as Mayor Acts to Probe Race Riot," Home News, March 21, 1935, 1.
- Probation Department Case File, 26458 (1935) (New York City Municipal Archives)
- New York Penal Law, § 1298-1299: Petit Larceny
- Selective Service Registration Cards, World War II: Fourth Registration, 1942, New York, Records of the Selective Service System, Record Group Number 147, National Archives and Records Administration. (Ancestry.com)
- "'Red Scare' Aims To Hide Negro Misery," Daily Worker, March 23, 1935, 1, 2.
- US Census, 1930, Enumeration District 3-61, Sheet 5B, Bronx, New York, New York (Ancestry.com)
- "Harlem: Survey - Census Tract #220 (25)," 1935, Roll 80, Subject Files, Office of the Mayor, Fiorello H. La Guardia records (New York City Municipal Archives).
- New York Penal Law, § 405: Unlawfully entering building