The streets were a bit rough in those days, as you can see from the above article. There was gang activity all over Yorkville back in the mid 1950s. I remember my father trying to curtail my older brother but it was a losing battle back in those days. It was an accident that was just about to happen...and it did happen.
It was fortunate that the Mayor of New York City lived down the block in Carl Schurz Park and he was ablle to curtail the gang activity in Yorkville by calling in the dogs...that's the police from the 19th and 23rd Precincts to calm the streets of Yorkville. Young punks, as we and older teenagers were called, were subjected to their nite sticks and constant pull overs by squad cars for standing on a corner.
The gang fights that littered the neighborhood, came to an abrupt stop via police activity and the neighborhood was able to survive. gang fights in other neighborhoods also came to and end over time. It was a thing back then.
There were a few of these newspaper articles like above back in those days. My brother informed me that the poor individual in the above fight was not an innocent victim but from a group of boys that engaged the other group of boys and the fight got out of hand. It was a street fight, that erupted from a bar, if memory serves me right.
As usual, it was a cop's son that was killed and he became a victim. The rest is history and a part of the untold stories of Yorkville. Enjoy,