Editor's note: This article originally appeared in the York Daily Record on May 1, 2003.

- From April 27, 2016: Riots murder victim's brother: From trial to tipstaff

- From April 19, 2016: Lillie Belle Allen's sister, Hattie Dickson, dies at age 70.


- From 2002: Silent no more: The murder of Lillie Belle Allen.


Two bullets in flight




Traveling at about 2,400 feet per second, a second bullet chased the first, darting away from a crowd of angry people, past red brick row homes and arcing over York's College Avenue with speed and purpose.




That Friday night, two universes in the City of York finally collided - the blue wall of the York Police Department and the young black men who vowed to take this shooting to their graves. For more than a week, they would be locked in a battle.


More: York's race riots were a war that left dozens injured and two people dead



Fifty years ago, racial tension, poverty and police hostility caused unrest in the city of York. Sean Heisey, York Daily Record


Bobby Simpson — An afternoon congregation





The Simpsons lived in an oppressive town, where cops rode the streets yelling, "Niggers, go home" from their cruisers and where a racist mayor put attack dogs in their hands.

The young men Simpson stood with on the corner of Penn and College that Friday afternoon lived parallel lives, raised in impoverished housing developments that Mayor John L. Snyder wouldn't improve, even when federal money was available for him to do it.

The neighborhoods sandwiched black folks into houses so close, so tight, that they all knew each other. Nothing touched one of them that they didn't all hear about.

At 6 feet tall, Simpson towered above a number of the men and young boys on that corner. But his size didn't intimidate them. People felt comfortable around him, he believed. In high school, he had played the unglamorous positions of offensive end and defensive end on the William Penn football team, but his teammates chose him as their captain.



Simpson already knew who had taken Sweeney down with a gunshot to the stomach - a Newberry Street Boy, a white thug named Bobby Messersmith.


"It's almost a relief to finally be able to fight them (the police) and come back and say you aren't going to take this shit any more," Simpson recalled recently.

They had no real tactic - just carry guns, protect their neighborhoods, and let no cop intimidate them.


Ron McCoy — Friday night ambush


Two officers manned each of the city's six or seven police cars; other patrolmen walked beats or rode department motorcycles; and the three-wheelers were employed for meter patrol.

Ron McCoy, a 31-year-old white cop in his fourth year with the department, was out riding a beat when a call came in about 10 p.m. that two police officers had been shot near the corner of Penn and College. All police officers were ordered to meet back at the station.


McCoy was assigned to ride in Big Al with Cpl. Sherman Warner and a young cop named Henry Schaad, a fishing buddy of McCoy's and the son of Detective Sgt. Russell Schaad.

As Schaad, Warner and McCoy prepared to leave the station, James Brown, one of the cops who had been shot near the corner, warned the men, "Please stay away from Penn and College. It's getting hot over there," he recounted later.

The van looked like a small bus inside. The driver's seat, where Warner took the wheel, was the only bench facing forward. A short bench in the front faced the driver. Beside it was a door, then a long bench. Behind the driver's seat was another long bench. Small, rectangular portholes on both sides and the back of the vehicle flipped down to reveal a half circle of metal bars through which the officers had a limited view outside. The only real windows in the van were at the front - the wide, short windshield and two square windows at each side, made of thick glass that didn't open. Its airtight interior shut out most outside sounds.

McCoy sat in the front passenger seat facing Warner, while Schaad sat on the long bench behind Warner. McCoy had never been inside the armored vehicle before, he said. He had never known it to be outside the fire department until that night, when the police department believed their lives were at risk on the streets.


As they drove toward the injured motorcyclist, Warner suggested that Schaad move up to the front passenger seat beside McCoy. Warner stopped the vehicle at a red light on Penn then turned onto College Avenue, past the crowd gathered beside Sam's Bar at the intersection. Since early Friday morning, 19 people had been injured passing by this corner, hit by bricks, stones or bullets aimed at their cars. The three officers wanted to get out of the neighborhood quickly. They had only their service revolvers with them because they were the only weapons the city police used at that time.




Barry Schaad — A bad night

When Henry Schaad's older brother walked through the doors of York Hospital close to midnight Friday, the emergency room looked like a triage unit in the middle of a battlefield. Ambulances lined the road outside, cops milled around inside, and the casualties of York's war filled the beds.


Barry Schaad wandered through the confusion, unsure where he could find his brother and family. He couldn't get anyone's attention until, finally, a police officer escorted him to a waiting room.

Already at the hospital were Henry's mother and wife, Carrie and Sonja Schaad; and Russell, his tall, reserved father.



Although combat and police work didn't prepare Russell Schaad for his son's shooting, it gave him an outward appearance of invincibility.

Russell Schaad gently told his middle son, "Boy, I don't have good news for you, but they're working on him, and it seems like they pretty much have him under control."


Tom Chatman — The morning after

The intersection of Penn Street and College Avenue didn't settle down until Saturday morning. The shootings and rock-throwing had ended. The crowd had retreated.





"It wasn't to kill a white cop. It would have been to kill a police officer," he said.

With 13 years behind him, Chatman had sources throughout the neighborhoods who often provided him with insiders' details. On Saturday, he turned to an informant on Penn Street, a man who often had solid information but wouldn't testify in a courtroom. The informant's tips usually led Chatman to other people who would talk. All Chatman wanted on this day was the name of the shooter - or shooters.

The informant, Chatman said, gave him four names: Stephen D. Freeland, Leon "Smickel" Wright, Michael "Picklenose" Wright and another man who didn't live in York.

Sonja Schaad — 24 hours of waiting


Friday night, Henry had been sitting up, telling Sonja, "Lock all the doors and windows when you go home." By Saturday morning, he was lying in bed with a tube sticking out of his throat. Henry had suffered breathing problems overnight and had needed a tracheotomy, which the staff attached to a respirator, hospital records show.

Beside Henry's hospital bed was a picture of the couple's only child, 5-year-old Sharon. She had been in the shower Friday night when her dad had quickly stopped at home to pick up something while on duty. Even though the guys were waiting for him in the police car, Henry gave both of his girls a kiss goodbye - Sharon stuck her head out of the shower for her dad, and Sonja watched him walk out the door.

As he hurried down the hallway, he had told Sonja, "It's really going to be bad tonight."

Mike Cronan — A Sunday stroll on the moon

Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. stepped onto the moon's dusty surface Sunday night, July 20, placed an American flag in the ground and saluted it. Mike Cronan joined millions of viewers who watched the historic landing, sitting in his landlord's house in York and listening to gunfire in the background. The simultaneous events seemed almost surreal to the young Gazette and Daily reporter.




Cronan said he didn't have political leanings. He focused on his job as a police reporter at a newspaper in which most of the reporters viewed themselves as "investigative journalists." They would hunt down whatever they could sniff out. For Cronan, that meant following the police trails, covering arrests and shootings during the riots, talking to witnesses and witnessing some of the action himself.


Karen Washington — Safe at home

Cooper Place, an alley close to Penn Park, didn't hear much of the action that was disrupting York's peace several blocks away and across the Codorus Creek. Once in a while, the echoes of gunfire came from the area of the park. And like most of the city's black residents, Karen Washington, 22 and the mother of three young boys, was scared for her children's safety.



Like many black city residents, Washington had heard stories about the police that worried her. A friend of her family's, William "Mutt" Orr, had been shot on Christmas Eve 1968 while sitting at his kitchen table on South Penn Street. The gunfire had come from outside the house.



Washington blamed the dogs and the police department's intolerance for blacks on Mayor Snyder, a man who said just what he thought and openly displayed his detest for anyone with black skin. Mayor Snyder headed the chain of command in the police department. Under him was Jacob Hose, the city's public safety director who oversaw both the police department and the fire department. Police Chief Leonard L. Landis reported to Hose.

About 90 men worked for Landis in the police department; six of them were black. Some black residents referred to those six men as "Toms," distrusted by some of the people in their own community because it was believed they tolerated the racist actions of some of their peers.

Tom Chatman — A vow of silence






Sonja Schaad — Disturbing the silence

The heat of July 21 smothered York so uncomfortably that most people stayed outside if they felt safe. Russell and Carrie Schaad and their daughter-in-law, Sonja, tried to relax on the Schaads' West North Street porch that Monday evening. Sonja didn't want to stay at home, around the corner on Park Street, while her husband was in the hospital, so she stayed where she felt safe, with her in-laws.

Henry's health faded and improved day to day.

Russell, Carrie and Sonja Schaad stayed by Henry's side as long as the hospital would allow them each day. When Henry was awake, he would try to talk, but the tracheotomy made him hard to understand.

The hospital staff believed his condition was improving slightly. His chest tubes, attached to each lung, were removed for a short time, but it became hard for him to breathe. He had pneumothorax — gas in the tissue around his lung — on his left side, and hospital records show Henry's body temperature slowly rose as it fought all the metal and bullet fragments still in him.



"Oh my gosh, it sounds like a war over there," Sonja said, as they heard shots just a few blocks away.

Russell Schaad's police scanner broke the news: A woman had been shot on North Newberry Street.

Bobby Simpson — A night near death

Bobby Simpson read about Lillie Belle Allen's death Tuesday morning.


Her sister, Hattie Dickson, had driven her car up North Newberry Street on the way to the store. Allen, their parents, and Dickson's husband had been in the car, when Dickson stopped the car on the railroad tracks because she noticed someone with a gun pointed at them. Allen said she would take the wheel and got out of the car with her hands in the air, saying, "Don't shoot." A single gunshot slammed into her, followed rapidly by the firing of many more.

The white gangs hanging out on North Newberry Street that night weren't the problem. The cops were, Simpson believed. The police were encouraging the young white boys to fight blacks. Several cops had staged a rally at Farquhar Park the day before, telling the white gangs to protect their neighborhoods. They even used Schaad's shooting to incite the boys, showing them the officer's blood in the armored van.

The German shepherds used in the black neighborhoods never patrolled North Newberry Street or any other white neighborhood in town. That pattern followed in cities across the country - dogs were being used to go after black people.

When York's black residents had protested at City Hall, the mayor wouldn't even walk outside to see them.

The wall between black residents and the Establishment of city government and the city's elite was so high that the black community's youngest and most vocal residents had stopped trying to climb over it. Instead, they were trying to blast it away. Simpson was an activist, a leader among many of the young black men in York, unafraid to question the authority that was holding his brothers back.

Through Simpson's eyes, the police were firing back, some of them through the guns of white gangs.

Simpson and his wife, Linda, lived in a corner house at 212 Green St. with their son, Mark. Simpson didn't hear the rumors going through the neighborhoods that his brother-in-law, Linda's younger brother, Stephen Freeland, had been the guy who shot at the police van, he said. Freeland was several years younger and ran with a different crowd. Simpson knew Freeland as a kid who loved giving to his family and friends the rabbits he had hunted.

Simpson had his own problems to worry about.


Simpson rolled his wife toward him, protecting her as they fell to the floor. The unrelenting beating of bullets into their house brought Mark running into his parents' bedroom, where he jumped onto the bed. Simpson pulled him to the floor, where they all remained, waiting the five to 10 minutes it took for the assault to end.


They stayed on the floor and slept there all night.


His neighbor, who had arrived home during the shooting, had seen everything. He had the answer: Two armored cars pulled up outside Simpson's house, one on Green Street and the other on an alley. Police officers jumped out and emptied their rifles on Simpson's home.

Bill Schintz — A photographer held back

While York residents viewed The Gazette and Daily as too liberal and anti-police, The York Dispatch's reputation swung the other way.



The Dispatch paid Bill Schintz, the son of a retired police officer and childhood friend of Henry Schaad, for each photo he took. The newspaper didn't hire photographers because it didn't publish many photos, so it paid freelancers to do the work. Most of the Dispatch's photographs of the riots appeared inside the newspaper. A number of them were from Schintz - of the National Guard and tense city meetings.


Young took one look at the photo and refused it, saying, "We don't want to incite any more trouble than what there is."

Carl 'Johnny' Williams a legacy of fear

The National Guard's 200 men arrived in York Tuesday, July 22, along with a downpour. Both seemed to drive the snipers indoors. Carl "Johnny" Williams didn't need the threat of National Guard personnel carriers to keep him inside his 127 E. Boundary Ave. house. He worked the first shift at Caterpillar, drove home and stayed there with his wife and 4-year-old son through the rioting. He didn't carry a gun even once during the riots because he didn't own one, he said.


Four years earlier, Williams' father, Carl E. Williams Sr., had been found dead at Small Athletic Field in York. When Williams identified his father at York Hospital's morgue, Carl's face was swollen, bruised and lacerated. He had clearly been beaten, Williams said, but the family had no idea who would have done it.

Witnesses told the Williams family that two police officers had picked up Carl for public drunkenness at College Avenue and Howard Street, Williams said. His entry into the police car was the last time he was seen alive. Two days later, a hunter found Carl's body in the field. A police blackjack was found near the body.



When York's black residents talked of police siccing dogs on them and beating them with nightsticks, Williams believed every word. He didn't trust the York Police Department, and he didn't join the crowds toying with the cops on this week. If you pushed the cops, he believed, they would push back harder. They did it to his childhood friend, Bobby Simpson.

Williams had touched the pumpkin ball holes in the walls of Simpson's house that week. He believed that Simpson's leadership and activism had made him a target by certain police officers.

The young black men who had been carrying guns since TakaNii Sweeney's shooting five nights earlier laid low when the National Guard rolled into town. The machine guns on the backs of their vehicles could blow a hole through a building. No one even wanted to blink at these guys.

Barry Schaad — A night in the ICU

The days passed for Barry Schaad. He'd work at Borg-Warner, then visit the hospital each night, twice a day on Saturday and Sunday. He waited to see Henry but couldn't. The hospital allotted so little time for the family that Barry's parents and sister-in-law took what time was available.





Barry adored the young man in the hospital bed clinging to life. Tubes ran in and out of Henry's body, but he was conscious.

Barry clutched Henry's hand and recited a prayer.

The doctor stuck needles into the 22-year-old's legs and feet, asking him if he could feel the pricks. Henry said he could feel something. The doctor explained to Barry that he could probably feel the pressure on his body but not the needle.

Henry looked at his brother and said, "Don't go down there."

Barry knew what he meant: Avoid the riots. Henry's concern choked up his brother. Here Henry was in the hospital barely alive, and if he survived all this, he would be paralyzed. Despite all the uncertainty he faced, Henry's concern was for his brother's safety.


It was the last time Barry saw his brother alive.

Bobby Simpson put the guns away


So he played along that it was his idea in order to turn the plan around. He told the boy he had changed his mind, that he didn't want anyone from the neighborhoods to fight any of the white boys.


He told the guys, "Look, we've had enough. We've got to turn things around."

His friends put their guns in the box, too.


Lillie Belle Allen was dead. TakaNii Sweeney still languished in York Hospital from the stomach wound inflicted on July 17, and other blacks had gone in and out of the emergency room from wounds of York's war. Bullets had ravaged Simpson's home and threatened his wife and son.

Simpson wanted to end his involvement in York's insurrection. He didn't want anyone's blood on his hands.

Mike Cronan — Beaten down



Cronan was shaken by Allen's death. She was an innocent victim of this violence - on the wrong street at the wrong time, the mother of two young children. It was heartbreaking.


"The woman that was shot was in a car with guns," the Newberry Street Boys told Cronan. They also told The Gazette and Daily police reporter that patrolmen allowed them on the streets on the nights before the state police and National Guard arrived in town "because the cops are okay and they understand the problems of the people in the area."

Cronan talked to other people in the North Newberry Street neighborhood. Some blamed the white gang violence on "kids being kids"; others defended them: "The Newberry street kids are defending the neighborhood against outsiders."

One source, "a mother of four children," saw the shooting and said, "The woman didn't have a chance."

His story appeared on page 4 of Monday's Gazette and Daily. When the Newberry Street Boys saw it, they didn't like what they read. It brought the cops into their homes, looking for weapons.


The Newberry Street Boys had a not-so-subtle message: Cronan shouldn't have written the story.

According to Fred Flickinger, one of the Newberry Street Boys who testified at a civil hearing later, a patrol car sat across the street while Cronan was beaten. The officer didn't move to take the reporter to the hospital until the gang had finished beating him.

Tom Chatman — A search for evidence


The racism label that blanketed the department, though, didn't follow what Chatman and several of his fellow officers - white and black - saw on the inside. Only a small number of the officers were overt racists, Chatman said.

The kids who shot Henry Schaad were using race to justify their horrific crime, he thought. Most of the black community had no involvement in the rioting or shootings. Most of the black elders didn't believe in the violent means used to achieve an end.

"People out there on that night were not choirboys," he said.


Without the physical evidence in hand, the investigation could go nowhere. A third-class city, as York is designated because of its population, couldn't in 1969 assemble an investigative grand jury. The jury would have forced people to talk on the record, Chatman said.


Sonja Schaad — Goodbye

The sound of someone crying in the backyard on Wednesday, July 30, carried into the Schaad's house. It was Russell Schaad. He had taken Carrie to their doctor because she needed something to calm her nerves. The doctor had delivered bad news: It didn't seem Henry would live more than a day or two longer. His fever was high, and he was losing his battle with pneumonia. Russell held that information from Sonja that night.



Wednesday night, Henry insisted that she be in his room.


He said, "I'm dying."


The next day, Henry's eyes remained closed through Sonja's visit. She whispered, "I love you," in his ear repeatedly, but he didn't stir. As she finally prepared to leave, the nurse noticed her walking out.

Perhaps the nurse was aware of what this night would mean to Sonja for years to come: "Aren't you going to say goodbye?"



Show Thumbnails
Show Captions


Epilogue in a bullet's wake

In 1999, three police officers began their exhaustive three-year investigations into the murders of Henry C. Schaad and Lillie Belle Allen. Those officers were: Rodney George, a York County detective and former York police officer; John Daryman, now retired as a York County detective and also a former York police officer; and Keith Stone, a Pennsylvania State Police trooper.

A grand jury investigation into the murders of Allen and Schaad initiated the arrests of 12 men. The two men charged with murder for killing Schaad were Stephen D. Freeland and Leon "Smickel" Wright. Freeland, who had been in jail on a drug conviction, and Wright, who had been in and out of jail, stood trial in March of this year. Prosecuted by Bill Graff, both were found guilty of second-degree murder.




Tom Chatman interviewed Freeland in the fall of 1969 after the boy had been imprisoned on another crime. Freeland wouldn't talk. Chatman and other officers interviewed everyone suspected in the case anytime they were arrested for other crimes, and police searched fruitlessly for the Krag each time weapons were confiscated in the city. Chatman retired from the York Police Department in 1986 after a stint as the police chief. He also earned his college degree from York College. He now works at the York County Courthouse for Judge John C. Uhler, who presided over the grand jury in the Lillie Belle Allen and Henry Schaad cases as well as the trial of three defendants in the Allen murder.





John L. Snyder's reign as mayor of York ended in October 1969 when he died in office of an aneurysm.


Carl "Johnny" Williams raised three children - the son who was a toddler during the riots and, later, two daughters. Williams retired from Caterpillar and now works part time at Crispus Attucks. In 2002, the Williams family had Carl Sr.'s body exhumed and studied for evidence of a beating. The forensic pathologist, James E. Starrs, could not say definitively that he was beaten to death, but he couldn't rule it out, either. The family gave the evidence to another pathologist for examination. Williams never told his son what had happened to his father because he didn't want his son to carry the hate in his heart for police that Williams feels to this day. His son is now a Pennsylvania State Police trooper.



Barry Schaad married and eventually adopted two children from Korea.

Russell Schaad, Henry's half-brother, died in 1988 of cancer.

Russell Schaad reluctantly retired from the police department in 1972, anguished that he would be further from his son's murder investigation. The city was tightening its budget and asked senior officers to take voluntary retirement. Russell ran for sheriff that year but lost, so he started the Schaad Detective Agency. The police continued to give him what little information they had over the years, and tips occasionally filtered in to Russell. He never shared those tips or names of suspects with his family, protecting them until his death in 1977 at age 56 of a heart attack.

His wife, Carrie, is still alive. The depth of her grief anguished her for years after Henry died, and she was never able to talk of it much. She pulled the shades in her home and went out very little for several years, even declining invitations to take a drive for ice cream because Henry had loved it so much. She didn't attend the trial of the two men convicted of his murder because she had been recuperating from a stroke, but Barry told her that two men were convicted of the crime and asked her if she was happy with that. She said, "Yes, I always wanted someone to pay for killing Henry. Do you mean they're going to jail?" Barry told her they were, and she said, "Good, that's what I always wanted."




YDR.comSupport local journalism

Read or Share this story: