Three Shot In N.Y. Street

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31730, 13 July 1968, Page 13

Three Shot In N.Y. Street

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter—Copyright)

NEW YORK, July 12.

A huge police hunt was on today for a man who terrorised a crowded New York street last night in a shooting orgy which left three young men dead and one wounded.

The man was identified by police as a young Negro former serviceman, superintendent of a dingy tenement building outside which the shootings took place. He fired more than a dozen rounds, apparently at random, with an automatic carbine and then escaped after doubling back into the building. After this latest mass slaying in the United States, the New York Mayor, Mr John Lindsay, called on Congress to “face up to its responsibilities” and pass strong guncontrol legislation. Mr Lindsay said the “selfish forces” opposed to gun control should take note of this “outburst of terror and bloodshed.”

One. who said he knew the gunman, claimed the shooting was not a sniper incident, but was caused by an argument. All the dead men were Puerto Ricans. Police cordoned off the area, but their search was hampered by crowds who thronged nearby streets and ignored warnings that Rodgers might open fire again.

The Mayor asked: “How many bodies are needed to demonstrate the desperate need for firearms control.” Police identified the man as Robert Rodgers, or Pugh, who had been superintendent of the five-storey building since last Christmas.

i At first they named him as Pugh, but later they said they believed his name was Rodgers, and Pugh was the surname of a woman he had been living with.

Every policeman in the city was ordered to watch for Rodgers, whom neighbours described as a friendly and peaceful man. The shooting occurred in the early evening in a rundown, predominantly Puerto Rican neighbourhood of the Bronx. Several witnesses reported that the man stepped from the building and began firing at random.