A few weeks ago we posted some news images documenting one of Pittsburgh’s most famous crime dramas — the Battle of Chicken Hill. While refiling those pictures, we discovered a second envelope. And we were amazed by the photographs found inside.
The shootout at Chicken Hill began as a bank robbery in Hays on July 23, 1959. A subsequent police chase through the South Hills ended when the two suspects darted from their vehicle and fled up a wooded hillside — known then as Chicken Hill — just south of the Fort Pitt Tunnel. Police followed and were met with gunfire. That’s when the shootout began.
Soon, two police officers were wounded.
City patrolman Anthony Paga was shot in the lower abdomen, according to news reports. One of the most stunning pictures we discovered shows a state police officer dragging Paga to safety. News articles indicate the unidentified trooper exposed himself to gunfire by making the rescue.
The picture of was taken by Vic Polk, an good-natured Carnegie lensman who photographed thousands of weddings and family portraits before his death in 2005. In the late ‘50s, Polk often took pictures for newspapers and police departments, so it was natural for him to be on the scene.
A second picture of Paga was snapped as fellow officers rushed their fallen comrade downhill on a stretcher. Paga is in obvious distress. In fact, a priest at the scene administered last rites, but Paga survived his wounds.
Suspect Joseph Gaito, who we now know as the “Chicken Hill bandit,” shows up in several pictures. In one, he’s being dragged in handcuffs down a muddy hillside. Another depicts Gaito lying on his back in what’s identified in the caption as a “police ambulance.” Both of these images were shot by Al Hermann Jr. of The Pittsburgh Press.
Other pictures show the resulting traffic jam on the Parkway West and nearby roads, and the stash of stolen loot recovered by police.
The pictures are a testament to the dedication of the city’s news photographers who, at the time, struggled with cumbersome equipment. Their work, produced under harsh and dangerous conditions, is riveting and thorough. And it makes real a legendary story we’ve often heard, but never truly understood.
