Chief Roberts stood beside his command car and used the built-in loudspeaker. “This is the chief of police of the city of Weldonville. We don’t want any unnecessary violence. If you will stop and place any firearms or other weapons on the pavement, raise your hands, and walk up Main Street to your left, you will be permitted to surrender peacefully without having anything to be afraid of. You will be kept comfortable and safe while we arrange for your transport back to the prison.”

Joseph R. Roberts was a brave man, and his bravery was one of the tools he had used to exert power during a thirty-five-year career in law enforcement. He stood in the open beside his command car with the microphone in his right hand, his feet planted apart, and his left arm resting comfortably across his chest. His voice held no hint of fear, no uncertainty or hesitation.

His approach should have worked. But there was a growing murmur, like a hum, coming from the escapees. It moved forward from the rear to the front, the impatient crowd wanting to know why their progress had stopped. Then, like a wave subsiding, the sound went from the vanguard to the back as the men who could see ahead passed the word of what was happening. One of the men in the second rank who had made it almost to Main Street raised an M4 to his shoulder and fired.

The chief dropped to the pavement, the microphone he had been holding swinging freely against his car on its curly cord. Every chest inhaled once while it was silent, and then the police officers on the west side of the street opened fire. They cut down the shooter and the five or six men nearest to him in a wave. The murmur from the column of escapees on Constitution Street rose to a roar of rage and ferocity.

By then there was no certainty, not even about what had happened. The police officers had fired at the man who had shot their chief, but it was probable that the other men were hit by rapid and poorly aimed shots, or by rounds that had gone through the culprit’s body. The escapees back on the darkened street and sidewalks of Constitution Avenue knew that people had been shot, but they could not possibly know who or why.

The escapees at the front of the column who had firearms from the prison crouched, knelt, or lay prone and fired on the police officers across the street. The escapees immediately behind them were armed with whatever weapons they could find or improvise. The ones who had taken guns from homes fired them. Others lit the rag fuses of Molotov cocktails—the bottles scavenged from garbage cans and the gasoline siphoned from parked cars—and threw them at the police cars. Some threw stones or bricks.