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  FAMOUS TRIALS LITE SERIES




Bernhard Goetz (image from cover of TIME magazine)
Bernhard Goetz Trial (1986-87)
by Douglas O. Linder (2011)
 
The Saturday afternoon before Christmas in 1984, on a New York City subway car making its run downtown, two black teenagers approached Bernhard Goetz.  One of the teens said to Goetz, "Give me five dollars."  Seconds later, Goetz fired five shots from his Smith & Wesson revolver and four young men were injured--one with a severed spinal cord.  When the train came to a screeching halt, Goetz unfastened a safety chain, jumped to the tracks below, and disappeared into the darkness of the subway tunnel.  City newspapers quickly dubbed the gunman "the subway vigilante."
[Continued]