Aaron Edwards
New York Times
The woman’s body stiffened with each passing second as she sat anxiously in the back row of a 14-person limousine. Suddenly, a man sitting near her was fatally shot — killed by an F.B.I. agent, the culmination of nearly 14 hours of one of the more gripping criminal episodes in recent New York City history.
She wore a navy blue dress suit with a modest skirt, white button-down blouse, heels and stockings. Considering that she had spent more than half a day as a hostage inside a Brooklyn bank, she was remarkably well put-together and deceivingly composed. She had not cried, but she was terrified.
After what felt to the woman like an hour inside the limo, which had parked near a runway at Kennedy International Airport, the agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation turned from the driver’s seat and shot the man — one of the robbers who had taken hostages inside the bank — in the chest. The side doors were flung open by police officers.
“Out! Everyone out!” they yelled. “Get out!”
It was Aug. 22, 1972. The events — an attempted bank robbery, hostages seized, a news media circus and the F.B.I. shooting at the airport — were the inspiration for the 1975 crime drama “Dog Day Afternoon.”
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