With the crimes of 30 years ago continuing to trouble the historic Pennsylvania city of York, police have arrested two black men and charged them over the killing of a white police officer during the race riots of 1969.
The arrest of the two men comes five months after the
city's white mayor was charged with the murder of a black woman during the same riots.
The mayor, Charlie Robertson, was a serving police officer at the time and on duty during the riots, which lasted 10 days.
Yesterday Stephen Freedland,49, and Leon Wright, 53, were charged with first and second degree murder over the shooting of Henry Schaad, a novice police officer who was killed three days before Lillie Belle Allen, the woman whom Mayor Roberston is charged with murdering.
"It's something we have wanted for 32 years," said Mr Schaad's brother, Barry. "Of course, I know this is just the first step. God willing I'll still be alive and healthy to see the end result of the this - that being some convictions and sentences."
The dead officer's daughter, Sharon, said she wanted to understand why people had shot at her father, who had been in his job just 10 months. "It's not like he was going in there with a gun to shoot at them," she said. "I just know they took my daddy away."
The arrests of the two men are the latest in a long and uncomfortable reexamination by the city of York of an unsettled and racially explosive chapter in its recent history. The race riots of the summer of 1969 were sparked when a black teenager was wounded by a member of one of several white gangs that operated in the city.
The riots led to more than 60 people being injured as houses and properties were set alight and gunfights broke out in parts of the city. More than 100 people were eventually arrested.
- INDEPENDENT
