Street Robbers Nabbed After Storekeeper Spots Them
A candy store owner recognized his attackers near the Commercial Dock bridge, leading to an immediate arrest by detectives.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Identified by John J. Duffy as the men who held him up in his confectionery store near the Commercial dock bridge last night, Andrew Disarbo and John Monteo, Italians, were arrested this afternoon by Detectives Milone and Ashby and locked up in the city jail. Disarbo had a loaded .38 caliber revolver in his pocket and Monteo had a murderous-looking stiletto concealed in the leg of his trousers. Duffy, who says he was held up at the point of Disarbo's gun last night and robbed of a valuable watch and some money, accompanied the two detectives this afternoon in a search for the culprits. Near Seventeenth and Pacific, Duffy suddenly exclaimed, 'There they are,' pointing to a bunch of five Italians talking excitedly on a corner. The officers picked out Disarbo and Monteo and hurried them to the station. They exactly answer the description given the police by Duffy last night, and the man who was robbed says he would have known the men anywhere.
“Duffy suddenly exclaimed, 'There they are,' pointing to a bunch of five Italians talking excitedly on a corner.”
This incident occurred near the Commercial Dock, a vital historic hub for Tacoma's waterfront commerce. While the specific street corner at 17th and Pacific remains a busy downtown intersection, the intense, racialized language used in the contemporary report regarding the suspects reflects the era's common practice of telegraphing ethnic identity as a shorthand for criminality.
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