Pair Charged in ’69 Police Killing

YORK, Pa. â€”  Two black men were charged Tuesday with killing a white police officer who was gunned down as he rode in an armored car during a 10-day race riot in 1969.

Stephen Freeland, 49, and Leon Wright, 53, were both charged with first- and second-degree murder after a day of deliberations by a grand jury that has been investigating the deadly riots for more than a year. Neither man entered a plea and both were jailed without bail.

They are accused of killing Officer Henry Schaad three days before a black woman was slain by gunfire from a white mob. Nine men, including Mayor Charlie Robertson, who was a police officer at the time of the riots, were charged earlier this year with her murder.

The riots started after a white gang member shot and injured a black man. More than 60 people were injured, 100 were arrested and entire city blocks were burned.

Schaad, 22, was shot on the second night of the riots as he rode in an armored car with two other white police officers. He was struck by a bullet from a Krag 30-40 rifle that pierced the vehicle’s steel plating and died in a hospital two weeks later.

The son of a York police detective, Schaad is the only York police officer killed in the line of duty.

An affidavit filed at Tuesday’s arraignment of the two suspects cited numerous witnesses who said they saw Freeland firing at the armored vehicle and later boasting that he had used a Krag 30-40.

One witness, York County Prison inmate Sherman Spells, said he heard Freeland claim that he hit the vehicle.

Freeland is serving a seven- to 14-year sentence on a drug conviction. The affidavit cited only one witness who claimed to have seen Wright fire at the vehicle.

In April, the grand jury handed up charges in the death of Lillie Belle Allen, a 27-year-old black preacher’s daughter gunned down by a white mob when she and her family were on the way to buy groceries.