July 16, 1964 - Lieutenant Thomas Gilligan (pictured), an off-duty police lieutenant, shot and killed a 15-year-old Negro boy in the Yorkville section of Manhattan today when the youngster allegedly threatened him with a knife. After the shooting, about 300 teenagers, mostly Negroes, pelted policemen with bottles and cans.
Before order had been restored by 75 steel-helmeted police reinforcements, a Negro patrolman attempting to disperse the screaming youths was hit on the head by a can of soda. He was taken to Lenox Hill Hospital, where his condition was later reported as good.
The shooting occurred at 9:20 a.m. outside a six-story apartment house at 215 East 76th Street, opposite the Senator Robert F. Wagner Junior High School, where summer school classes were in progress.
The dead boy was James Powell, a student at the school, who lived at 1686 Randall Avenue, the Bronx. The police said the youth had been shot twice, in the right hand and in the abdomen, by Lieut. Gilligan of Brooklyn’s 14th Division.
The trouble began when Patrick Lynch, superintendent of the building at 215 East 76 Street, sprayed water on three youths while he was washing down the sidewalk, according to Deputy Chief Inspector Joseph Coyle of the Manhattan North Detectives.
“The youths and the superintendent had some heated words,” Coyle said, “and then the superintendent ran into the building with the boys in pursuit.”
Gilligan, according to the police official, was in a television repair shop next to the apartment house. He had taken a small radio there for repairs, and on hearing the commotion, left the store to investigate.
“The officer was dressed in civilian clothes,” Coyle said. “He saw the boys banging on an apartment door with a garbage can lid and ordered them to stop.
“He showed his shield, and one of the boys [later identified as Powell] came after him with a knife. Powell refused to heed the lieutenant’s instructions and continued toward him with the knife in his hand. The lieutenant warned him, but the youth raised the knife.”
The police official said that Gilligan then drew his service revolver and warned the youth again. As Powell advanced, the lieutenant fired “in defense of himself,” Coyle said.
The first shot hit the boy in the right hand but did not stop his advance, the inspector said, and then “the lieutenant shot several times at the boy.”
The boy crumpled to the ground in front of the building. The pocket knife he was said to have carried was found in the street a foot from the curb, the police said.
The police said later that Gilligan had fired three shots. One bullet had passed through Powell’s right wrist and struck him in the right shoulder. Another passed through the youth’s abdomen. The third shot missed the boy and went through a glass panel in the door of the apartment house.
Coyle said that Gilligan had been cut on a finger as he and Powel closed in on each other. The lieutenant was taken to Roosevelt Hospital, where he was treated and released.
Gilligan, who is 36 and lives in Manhattan, has received 19 citations for outstanding police work since he joined the force in December 1947. The six-foot, 200-pound police officer was cited four times for disarming men with guns.
Powell lived with his widowed mother in the Sound View city housing project in the Bronx. He had no brothers or sisters.
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