John Gerard Scarangella, a 42-year-old male New York City Police Officer of Italian descent, was on duty in St. Albans, Queens on the evening of April 16, 1981. He and his partner, Officer Richard Rainey, were on patrol when they stopped a van that matched the description of a vehicle connected to a string of local burglaries. The traffic stop, which took place on 116th Avenue between 202nd and 203rd Street, quickly turned into a violent ambush.
Before the officers could even get out of their patrol car, two men emerged from the van and opened fire with 9-millimeter semi-automatic handguns, unleashing a barrage of approximately 30 shots.
Officer Scarangella was struck twice in the head, while his partner, Officer Rainey, was hit 14 times in his back and legs. Officer Scarangella was transported to the hospital where he succumbed to his injuries two weeks later on May 1, 1981. Officer Rainey survived the brutal attack but was so severely wounded that he was forced to retire from the police force the following year.
The assailants fled the state after the shooting, prompting a large-scale manhunt. One of the suspects was eventually apprehended in North Carolina. The second suspect was later found in Philadelphia by two local police officers who noticed he was wearing a bullet-resistant vest. When they approached him, he dropped a gun and attempted to flee but was captured after a struggle. The gun he had dropped was later identified as the weapon used to kill Officer Scarangella and wound his partner. The two men, identified as Anthony Laborde and James Dixon-York, were members of the Black Liberation Front, a radical group.
The legal proceedings that followed were complex. After two separate trials resulted in hung juries on the murder charge, both Laborde and Dixon-York were finally convicted of the murder of Officer Scarangella in July of 1986 and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. They were also convicted of the attempted murder of Officer Rainey. One of the suspects was also considered a prime suspect in other police officer murders, and a gun linked to those crimes was found in his possession upon his arrest. Both men ultimately died in prison; one on August 30, 2008, and the other on April 3, 2016. It was also believed that Joanne Chesimard, a member of a Black Panther splinter group who was convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper, was present during the shooting of the officers.
