This page was created by Anonymous.
Victor Fain shot
As this shooting is not part of a cluster, and there is no information on the circumstances, it is likely Fain was shot by police patrolling the streets in radio cars and emergency trucks seeking to control looting – as was Lloyd Hobbs at the same corner an hour and a half earlier, and James Thompson on 8th Avenue three hours later. Fain was shot some distance from his home: he lived fifteen blocks to the south, in a section on the southern margins of Harlem mostly occupied by whites and Puerto Ricans (although some time later in 1935 he relocated to the heart of the neighborhood, lodging at 208 West 141st Street, where he still resided at the time of the 1940 Census).
An ambulance attended Fain, who had been shot in the left ankle, taking him to Harlem Hospital. All the sources agree on his injury, an unusual consistency that likely reflects that he stayed in the hospital after being treated.
The hospital record does not identify Fain’s race, but newspapers do. The lists of the injured in the New York American, Home News and and the story in the New York Times include his race; the lists of injured in the New York Daily News, New York Post and New York Evening Journal do not. Three of the five other men shot and wounded in the disorder were black, one of unknown race, and one white police officer.
No one was arrested for shooting Fain, as was the case with all of those shot and wounded (Detective Campo’s alleged assailant was shot and killed).
This page has tags:
This page references:
- “List of Victims," New York Evening Journal, March 20, 1935, 1, 3.
- "Injured," New York Daily News, March 20, 1935, 3
- “List of Casualties in Riots,” New York Post, March 20, 1935, 6.
- "5 dying and Scores Wounded as Race Riots in Harlem Subside," Home News, March 20, 1935 [clipping]
- “Riot’s Casualties," New York American, March 21, 1935, 2.
- "Police Shoot Into Rioters; Kill Negro in Harlem Mob. 3,000 Storm Store After Boy Knife Thief, 16, Is Reported Lynched-Several Shot - Many Felled by Stones," New York Times, March 20, 1935, 1.