Editor's note:  Schatze Thorp is editor of the column featuring readers' most wild or most heartwarming moments. Readers are encouraged to share their stories. Send your story with a photo (if possible) to Schatze Thorp at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Stories should not exceed 800 words but need not be that long and can be as short as a few sentences. 

This week's "scariest" piece comes to us from David Fuller, known to many of you as a lawyer, a judge, and a notable presence in many community organizations and neighborhood groups. Thanks, David, for a very scary bit of history in our own backyard!

By David Fuller

Jul. 27, 2016:  For the New York Times, it was a botched robbery attempt, two police shot, and a chase from Mount Vernon that dead-ended on Summit Avenue in Tuckahoe.

It started for me on a calm Saturday afternoon in the spring of 1973 as I was walking down Bronxville's Hobart hill when I passed a neighbor who was crying as she rushed her daughter to the top.

We had moved with our one-year-old son in 1971 to Gifford Street from the city, where I had been working for the Manhattan DA's office. Our new neighborhood, shared by the two villages, was reputed to be an area free of crime.

Soon I heard helicopters overhead and was startled by police with sawed-off shotguns searching around and ordering everyone to their homes. As I started back, I learned from neighbors that the police were looking for armed men. We stayed at home, watching the police go up and down our street.

An hour or so later, we were allowed out, and in walking the neighborhood, I saw a small gathering on adjacent Henry Street, where a neighbor was telling his story. An armed man had entered his veranda where he and his wife and daughter had been sitting and, after some fast talking, he had agreed to drive the man to Harlem if the man would let his wife and daughter go upstairs. The man got on the back floor of the car of the neighbor, who then backed it out of the driveway. His neighbors were giving him friendly waves as he drove out, not realizing the nature of his mission. He delivered his passenger and returned. His hands were trembling as he told his story, clutching what looked like a Scotch and soda.

Another man was found by the police in the bushes of the Immaculate Conception Church, and a third headed north.

We learned that four men were fleeing the police after a report of "suspicious males" by an A & P store manager in Mount Vernon. Somehow, in heading north, abandoning their car and commandeering another, three of them had gotten onto Summit and raced to the end for an unexpected abrupt stop on what was neighbors John and Mary's front lawn. (I saw the car with skid marks on the lawn later that day.)

The couple was in the middle of giving a birthday party for their daughter. John quickly dialed the police, but when he looked up, he was confronted by a man aiming a pistol at him and ordering him to drop the phone. With the party in disarray, and while children were escaping with their mothers, John was able to talk the man into putting the pistol down and giving himself up.

The Times reported the next day that the two men arrested had been charged with attempted murder.

With all the tragic news of shootings that we have been bombarded with recently, this may not seem all that unusual, but close to home, it was big news in '73. 

Pictured here:  David Fuller.

Photo by N. Bower