Nov. 9, 1929
Scranton native
in shootout with Chicago police
Anthony Sarkis, a former Scranton resident, was involved in a shootout with Chicago police.
Police said Sarkis and another man “aroused the suspicions” of two police officers, Lt. Thomas McFarland and Sgt. Harry O’Connell, who asked the pair to stop at 11th Street and Wabash Avenue. The request turned into an exchange of bullets between the pair and the cops.
The shootout finally come to an end, according to the Chicago Tribune, when another officer, Detective Edward Krall, arrived at the scene and shot Sarkis in the hand.
McFarland and O’Connell were wounded and taken to a hospital for treatment. Sarkis suffered a bullet wound to the hand.
On Nov. 12, a Chicago grand jury would charge Sarkis with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. Judge Francis Borrelli set his bail at $45,000.
It wasn’t Sarkis’ first run-in with law enforcement. He was well known to police in the Scranton area and Newark, New Jersey.
In July 1924, he got into some serious trouble with the law in Newark when he shot a police detective at the city’s police headquarters. The detective was seriously injured but survived. Sarkis was sentenced to a stay at the New Jersey Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Trenton, New Jersey, on Nov. 7. He was released in November 1925 and returned to Scranton.
In Scranton, Sarkis was arrested on suspicion of arson for fire at a store he operated on Jackson Street in July 1926. Charges were dropped due to lack of evidence.
In August 1927, he got into a fight with two state police officers during a traffic stop in Clarks Summit. Sarkis pulled out a revolver and pointed the weapon at the two troopers — Cpl. Arthur Zimmerman and Sgt. Nick Sossong. The three continued to fight until the troopers subdued Sarkis, who was arrested. He was later sentenced to five months in Lackawanna County Jail but was paroled a month into his sentence by the sanity commission.
BRIAN FULTON, library manager, oversees The Times-
Tribune’s expansive digital and paper archives and is an authority on local history. Contact Brian at bfulton@timesshamrock.com or 570-348-9140.