War With South Side Gang
The greatest rival to the North Side Gang was the South Side Gang, an Italian-American]] gang under New York mobster Johnny Torrio that controlled the South Side of Chicago. Torrio had attempted to peacefully divide bootlegging territories in Chicago among the different gangs, but O'Banion resisted Torrio's efforts and provoked him on several occasions. On November 10, 1924, South Side gunmen killed O'Banion in his Chicago floral shop. Gang leadership now fell to Hymie Weiss, who initiated a string of retaliatory attacks on the South Side Gang.
On January 25, 1925, Drucci, Weiss, and George Moran ambushed Torrio lieutenant Al Capone, shooting up Capone's car, but failing to kill him. On January 27, Drucci and the two other North Siders ambushed Torrio while he was shopping with his wife. Severely wounded, Torrio survived the attack. At one point, police brought Drucci and Weiss to Torrio's hospital bedside, but Torrio refused to identify them as the shooters. After his recovery and a short jail term, Torrio relinquished control of the South Side Gang to Capone and returned to New York City.
On May 25, Drucci, Weiss, and Moran killed South Side ally Angelo Genna. On July 8, Drucci and a second gunman murdered Anthony Genna. On November 13, they murdered Genna gunman Samuzzo Amatuna in a barber shop.
Read more about this topic: Vincent Drucci
Famous quotes containing the words war, south, side and/or gang:
“It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“A friend and I flew south with our children. During the week we spent together I took off my shoes, let down my hair, took apart my psyche, cleaned the pieces, and put them together again in much improved condition. I feel like a car that’s just had a tune-up. Only another woman could have acted as the mechanic.”
—Anna Quindlen (20th century)
“We say justly that the weak person is flat, for, like all flat substances, he does not stand in the direction of his strength, that is, on his edge, but affords a convenient surface to put upon. He slides all the way through life.... But the brave man is a perfect sphere, which cannot fall on its flat side and is equally strong every way.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Raise your eyes and count the small gang of your oppressors who are only strong through the blood they suck from you and through your arms which you lend them unwillingly.”
—Georg Büchner (1813–1837)