EAST SIDE MOURNS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 196, 20 August 1931, Page 7

EAST SIDE MOURNS

YOUNG GANG VICTIM. REWARDS OFFERED. VANCOUVER, Aug. 3. New York East Side turned out on Saturday to its most impressive funeral —that of five-year-old Michael Vengalli, who was killed by gangsters’ bullets on Tuesday night. All “Little Italy”—in fact, the whole foreign quarter—thronged the streets in teeming hundreds of thousands as the cortege zig-zagged along, with a third of the city’s police holding the crowds in check. Five children were wounded and Michael was killed when they got in the line of fire of a machine gun being fired by one group of gangsters against another. The city has offered £6OOO in rewards. There have been no arrests yet, though two gangsters have been killed since Michael’s tragic death. New York’s homicide list totals 200 already this year —an increase of 25 per cent, on the worst previous year. ASKED TO HELP. LONDON, Aug. 3. Britain’s most famous living detective, ex-Chief Constable Wensley, has been invited to assist in the extermination of gangs in New York, says the Weekly Dispatch. New' York police, it is stated, are now shooting on sight in their war against gangsters. Wensley says he cannot accept tne American invitation unless he is guaranteed executive power. He believes that the terrorists can finally be beaten if tackled unflinchingly, as Scotland Yard dealt with certain desperate gangs in Britain.