Edward Boyer, a 24-year-old African American male from Chester, Pennsylvania, was killed on the morning of November 6, 1948, during what became known as the Market Street Massacre. The shooting began around 8:15 a.m. near 233 Market Street in Chester’s Bethel Court neighborhood, when Melvin Collins, a 38-year-old man from Exmore, Virginia, barricaded himself inside a second-floor boarding room and opened fire from the window with a.
22-caliber Springfield rifle.
Boyer was among a small group of men standing below the rooming house when Collins called out for someone to “call the cops” and dropped a dime from the window. As the men reacted, Collins aimed down at the street and fired. Boyer was struck in the chest and died at the scene, becoming the first person killed in the attack. What had begun as a strange exchange from a window quickly turned into a deadly ambush, with people in the street, nearby businesses, and surrounding apartments caught in the line of fire.
After Boyer was shot, Collins continued shooting at anyone he could see. Detective Elery Purnsley, who was nearby, rushed toward the building and ordered Collins to drop the rifle. Collins turned the weapon on him, and Purnsley fired back, reportedly grazing Collins, but Collins returned fire and killed the detective. Fred Casino, a passing motorist, stopped and tried to help Purnsley, only to be shot and killed as well. Other victims were struck as they tried to flee, help the wounded, or simply looked out from windows after hearing the gunfire.
The attack lasted a little over an hour and drew a large police response from Chester officers and Pennsylvania State Police. Officers surrounded the building, fired into Collins’s position, and threw tear gas canisters through the window in an effort to force him out. Police eventually began moving up the stairs toward his room while calling for him to surrender. Before they reached him, Collins lay down on his bed and shot himself through the mouth, ending the attack.
No arrest was made in Boyer’s killing because the identified gunman, Melvin Collins, died by suicide at the scene. Collins was treated as the sole suspect and perpetrator. Since he was dead when police entered the room, there were no charges, trial, or conviction. Reports described him as having a violent history before the massacre, including prior malicious maiming convictions connected to shootings in Virginia, a prison sentence, and an outstanding felony warrant from Northampton County, Virginia, for a break-in allegedly committed shortly before he arrived in Chester.
Investigators and reporters searched for a motive, but no clear reason for the massacre was ever established. Early rumors suggested the violence may have been tied to a dispute over a small wager or numbers racket, but police rejected that explanation. Other confused accounts circulated in the aftermath, including false or distorted versions of the sequence of events, but the accepted account remained that Collins deliberately fired from his room into the street and nearby buildings, killing Boyer and several others before taking his own life.
