Police had been searching for 10 days for a gang of armed robbers who had been holding up businesses and using "pistols to beat down victims." Around 2:30PM on Feb. 3, three black men held up the Benner Box Co. at 2930 N.W. 39th Ave.
The three men first entered the building posing as job applicants (perhaps to "case" the building) but returned in a few minutes "each brandishing a gun." Miami Herald reporters Henry Reno (the father of State Attorney Janet Reno 1993-2001) and Charles Fernandez described the robbery: They ordered all employees--including eight women--to lie on the floor, face down. After ripping out telephone wires and wrecking the switchboard, they scooped up between $5,000 and $7,500 in cash from a register and ran to their car. A truck driver, J.W. Wilson, Miami Shores, who came to the pay window as the robbery was going on, was ordered inside and hit on the head with a pistol butt. (Miami Herald, 241953) Officer Fritz heard the police radio broadcast about the robbery that went out moments later. But when he radioed in a few minutes later that he had "stopped a black Cadillac with three Negroes" at N.W. 119th St. near 20th Ave., he had no idea that he had "caught" the bandit gang. Officer Fritz left his motorcycle "on its stand in the center of the road" and approached the Cadillac with his gun in his holster.
This shooting became the first in the history of the department to be critiqued along the lines followed by the FBI. Bud Thompson, a high-ranking official in Dade's County Road Patrol (and a former FBI agent) led a team of detectives in analyzing the shooting. The team determined that early news reports that Officer Fritz recognized the vehicle he stopped as the possible get-away-car of the robbers were incorrect. As evidenced by the fact that Fritz approached the car with his gun in his holster, the officer thought he had simply stopped a speeding violator.
Suddenly a shot was fired from inside the Cadillac at the patrolman. Officer Fritz was hit in the face and fell to the pavement. One of the occupants then stepped from the car to take the officer's gun and "ripped his holster belt from his body" as he lay "sprawled on the shoulder of the road." The bullet had entered below the officer's eye and pierced his brain.
Mrs. W.H. Lolan, a woman whose home was only 75 feet from the shooting, heard the fatal shot and looked outside her house to see the black Cadillac with a body beside it. She ran outside the house as the car "burned out" (leaving a deep tire rut on the shoulder of the road) and as Metro-Dade officer Charles O'Connor arrived on a motorcycle followed by Metro-Dade officers Daniel Norwood and Joe Balough in a police car.
Mrs. Lolan shouted to the motorcycle officer, "The car went that way" (east on 119 St.) and he "took off after the bandits." Officers Norwood and Balough went to the aid of the fallen officer. "A nearby priest rushed to the scene and gave the dying policeman the last rites of the church." Officer Fritz was pronounced dead at the scene.
The pursuing motorcycle almost caught the three fugitives at 119th St. and N.W. 7 Ave., when their Cadillac "collided with another car and locked bumpers" at a traffic light. The three fugitives "jumped out and bodily wrestled the bumpers loose" and fled again just as the pursuing motorcycle officer "came in sight."
As the chase narrowed, Officer O'Connor fired one shot at the speeding Cadillac and then became the "target of a hail of shotgun and pistol bullets" that continued for 20 blocks (on 7th Ave. from 119th St. north to 139th St.). O'Connor said shotgun pellets kept bouncing off his wind visor as he gave chase. He later described the shots hitting his wind visor as "like rain on the windshield." The nature of the chase changed at 7th Ave. and 139 St. as the Cadillac turned left into a residential section. The occupants tried a new tactic---they stopped three or four times and one occupant jumped out of the car each time with a shotgun and fired at the motorcycle officer (the officer never got closer than a block and a half away). Each time Officer O'Connor also stopped and dodged the gunfire until the gunman got back in the car and the Cadillac took off again. Between stops the occupants kept shooting at the officer from the back seat of the car. However, O'Connor "pressed pursuit relentlessly in the face of threatening death, until the greatest manhunt in recent South Florida history could be mobilized."
The bandit car last stopped on S. Biscayne River Dr. (a street that paralleled Biscayne Canal) at N.W. 10 Ave. O'Connor saw two men exit the car at that point while the driver of the Cadillac fled north toward Ft. Lauderdale. O'Connor, fearing that one of the gunman planned to hide in the bushes and ambush him as he rode by, stopped for the last time. He then received radio instructions to wait for the manhunt which would be in place in minutes.
More than 200 police officers from jurisdictions all over Dade County converged on the area near Biscayne Canal around 153rd St. Aided by bloodhounds, the officers searched for the two fugitives who had leaped from the get-away car. At about 3:00PM one of the two men being sought, George ("Limpy") Anderson, 31, was arrested on the bank of the Biscayne Canal, where he had joined a party of fisherman and tried to pose as one of them.
Three elderly black men were fishing in Biscayne Canal at about 153rd St. when they heard sirens wailing and saw a black man run up "just pouring sweat" and told them he had just had a fight with his boss and said "the cops are after me."
The intruder offered the fisherman $20, then $50, to drive him to a bus stop. Then as he saw part of the posse approaching, he abruptly sat beside them and grabbed one man's fishing pole. North Miami patrolmen Lee Graham, Rufus Bardinelli and Floyd E. Moon approached and quickly recognized that Anderson was not the fisherman he claimed to be. They "could not reconcile the fourth Negro's natty clothes with the attire of his companions" and noted that there were four men but only three fishing poles. The officers also noted that Anderson was sweating heavily and "looked so scared he was almost pale." The three fisherman told police that they had been fishing for four hours but that the suspicious man with them had only just arrived. Anderson was arrested at that point. The three officers later received commendations and "two days extra vacation" from N. Miami Chief Karl Engel.
Patrolman Howard Northrup of Hollywood had heard the radio alert for a black Cadillac driven by a black male and at 3:45PM saw a car fitting that description heading north. He radioed Dania police that the car was coming and turned around to pursue the Cadillac. At the Dania Beach bridge in Hollywood Beach, he "forced the car to the curb, just as Dania police drove up." The driver, Richard ("Fat Back") Floyd, a 23 year old black male, "surrendered meekly, with the greeting: 'I didn't kill the cop'."
Police found money bags containing $375, a sawed-off shotgun and two .38 revolvers, one belonging to officer Fritz. All three weapons had been recently fired (at Fritz and O'Connor). Floyd implicated Percy ("Wassie Blue") Armbrister, 23, in the killing and claimed that Armbrister was the triggerman. He also said that officer Fritz "didn't have his gun out" when shot by Armbrister and added that Armbrister stepped from the car to take the officer's gun.
Shortly after 5:00PM, Miami "Negro policeman" James Watson arrested Armbrister in Overtown "in a stake out" as he approached his home. Armbrister did not resist arrest but claimed that he had no knowledge of the robbery and shooting. Thus within three hours all three fugitives had been arrested. The .38 caliber pistol used to kill Officer Fritz was found the following day on a canal bank along with most of the money taken in the holdup.
The three fugitives were questioned by Capt. Ray Tanner, commander of the "Negro precinct," Det. Chief H.G. Howard, Lt. L.F. Napier, Sheriff Thomas J. Kelly, Chief Criminal Deputy Richard J. Zmeskal and State Attorney George Brautigam. As a result of the questioning and gathering of evidence the trio were charged with "nine daylight holdups since Jan. 12, in which eight persons had been pistol-whipped, one man shot at and approximately $11,000 total loot taken."
The State Attorney "stayed up all night preparing evidence" in the case to ensure speedy justice. The state moved "with unprecedented swiftness" as the three men were arraigned on first degree murder charges and given a preliminary hearing within 24 hours before Peace Justice Edwin Lee Mason. "Twenty deputy sheriffs and most of State Attorney George Brautigam's staff were present at the hearing."
The three men were asked whether they wanted attorneys. Anderson and Floyd said they did but Armbrister rejected the offer. Anderson and Floyd were then given "30 minutes to confer with John T. Bond and Hugh F. Duval, Jr., appointed to defend them." They were held without bond and bound over for the grand jury. Further police investigation identified "five other Negroes" as being involved in the recent string of robberies. All eight men were placed in line-ups and identified by witnesses from one or more of the 11 robberies. Seven of the eight were charged in robbery informations filed on Feb. 6 by Assistant County Solicitor Norman Crouch.
The four charged in addition to Armbrister, Anderson, and Floyd were Milton Walker, Moses K. Murray, Moses Flewelin and James Chester. A few days later Robert McGruder and Dorothy Mae Williams were charged with involvement in the robbery gang. The composition of the robbery team varied for each of the 11 robberies as it appears that as many as 10 persons comprised the loosely knit robbery gang.
The Herald reported on April 26, 1953 (2 & 12 months after Fritz was killed), that the community continued to be plagued by payroll robberies and that Sheriff Thomas J. Kelly had "declared war" on "gun-toting thugs" and the "alumni of Raiford." The newspaper indicated that "payroll robberies have become so frequent in recent months that Friday---pay roll day for many big employers---has become a day of tense anticipation for police officers throughout the area." Metro officer Michael Daugherty was shot in April when he chased four masked bandits who had driven up alongside a payroll truck and "relieved them of a $5,200 pay roll."
The killing of Officer Fritz led to the creation of a training program for the "Road Patrol." Prior to his death, rookie officers were placed in the back seat of two-man units, in order to observe how police work was done. Formalized training, even in the area of firearms, was nonexistent prior to this event. Officer Bud Thompson, who investigated the murder, was given the task of creating a training program. The new "police academy" consisted of three days of paid training and three days of nonpaid training.