[Edit to add: would help if I’d included a title the first time around…]
Interesting: on this day, July 22, notorious bank robber (etc.) John Dillinger was shot dead outside the Biograph Theatre in Chicago. You can read the New York Times account of it here.
…as I did. And there I learned a couple of new names: Mrs. Etta Natalsky and Miss Theresa Paulus. They’re mentioned in passing, of interest because they were both wounded in the left leg in the hail of law-enforcement gunfire which erupted when Dillinger reached for his gun. I’d never even wondered about that before — if bystanders were struck — so off I went to see if I could dig up more information about the two ladies.
Haven’t yet found anything on Theresa Paulus. But I had to stop looking anyway, because I got totally sidetracked by a little detail: Etta Natalsky petitioned the US Government for reimbursement for her hospital expenses, and was turned down.
You can read the decision of the US Comptroller General here, at the Web site of the General Accounting Office, which includes background such as details of the cost. It also details three other vouchers, filed by a couple of guys who were bystanders injured in the “raid of the Little Bohemia Lodge, in connection with the investigation leading to the apprehension of John Dillinger.” As near as I can tell, the reason the Comptroller General’s office denied compensation to them all was: the victims were not — not — prisoners of and had not been arrested by the US government:
The necessary expense of medical or surgical treatment of persons who have been arrested by officers of the United States and are held as prisoners of the United States is an expense incident to the arrest which, if incurred under proper conditions and with due authority, is a lawful charge against the United States… There is, however, no authority for the payment of such expenses where the injuries were caused by a government officer and the injured person has not been arrested and charged with a crime against the United States.
Huh. Comment probably superfluous.
[Edit to add (2): this post has nothing to do with recent hot-button issues in the US. Please do not interpret it that way. It’s rather appalling that this possibility even occurred to me.]
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