LASOLA CUT HIS
RIVAL'S THROAT
SLIPPED UP ON DE ROSA, DIS-
GUISED BY A BEARD.
BELONGS TO THE BLACK HAND
De Rosa Shot at His Assailant, Police
Shot at Him, and Everybody
Missed -- De Rosa Only
Scratched.
Shots, cries, hurrying feet; a cut throat, poor marksmanship, a woman; black whiskers, Black Hand and a bunch of policemen that couldn't hit Clay county if it stood on edge, were factors in a riotous drama near police headquarters at 11:30 o'clock last night.
It started when Alessandro De Rosa, who is a bartender at 302 Main street, went to his place of employment to roll a few lemons and knock a bung or two for the brief, but brisk, hour of trade between midnight and 1 a. m. Alessandro had inserted his key in the front door lock and was bending over it, grunting a bit because it turned with difficulty, when a heavily whiskered man darted from the shadow of the next doorway, slashed De Rosa's throat twice with a knife and ran.
De Rosa, who is tough under the chin, thanks to shaving for many years past in North End barber shops, wasn't much more than scratched. He jerked a revolver from his pocket and fired at the flying whiskers. Once, twice, thrice, he blazed away, but the person with the beard and dull knife ran up on Main street toward Fourth. De Rosa followed, shouting for the police and snapping his revolver, which had gone to sleep, at every leap.
The police were awake in Central station, Fourth and Main streets, at that hour. They heard the noise and turned out, several of them, just as the whiskered man wheeled into West Fourth street and galloped toward Wyandotte.
The police added their imperious commands to the tenor wail of Alessandro de Rosa, but whiskers bobbed along with hardy disregard. Shots sounded again, and the fugitive increased his gait, while Alessandro, who was behind the policemen, and ripe in experience, took shelter back of a fat telephone pole.
The fugitive passed into the penumbra of a wholesale house, became obscured in the eclipse of black shadow, and the police pelted on. When they came to the point where the man they chased had disappeared, they halted. Another man, but whiskerless, was walking toward them, calm, unagitated. They nabbed him, and led him into the light.
Alessandro de Rosa had come up by then, and when he saw the captive he exulted.
"It is Joe Lasola," said he, "but he wore whiskers w hen he cut my throat."
On the way to the station a policeman found the whiskers, lying where Lasola had cast them in his flight. They were made of black dyed wool, clumsy, dense, with a tin attachment to hook them on behind the ears.
De Rosa said that he had quarreled with Lasola over a woman. That was the whole trouble. Lasola, being known to him, knew he could not approach withing damaging distance in his own proper face, so he had made the whiskers and waited.
The police brought the woman from the address given by De Rosa. She said her name was Anita Zuvino and that she knew Joe Lasola to be a member of the Black Hand. She had lived with him formerly, she said, and offered as evidence a newly-healed knife wound on the back of her hand. Lasola received money each month from headquarters of the Black Hand organization, she declared.
Lasola repudiated everything, but the whiskers. He grinned when they were held up before him.
De Rosa's wounds are only slight. Lasola passed through the rain of fire without a mark. He was held by the police and will be turned over to the state authorities today.
