Dillinger gang rounded an Indiana corner as now-Rockfordian ducked inside store

June 29th, 2009 at 02:31pm Georgette Braun

Talk about dodging bullets, and infamous ones at that.

Al Petzke of Rockford was 7 years old when he narrowly missed being shot up by — who he believes then and still does — was John Dillinger and his gang in South Bend, Ind.

(Al Petzke, photo provided)

Dillinger, the subject of “Public Enemies” starring Johnny Depp and opening Wednesday, and his gang had allegedly just robbed the Merchants National Bank on June 30, 1934.  It was less than a month before Dillinger was shot dead in Chicago by police.

Petzke and his father had just entered the Cloud Brothers appliance store to buy a replacement part for the family’s wringer washing machine. Al’s mom washed clothes to make money during the Depression.

They heard sirens, exited the store, then quickly went back inside the vestibule of the store when they saw the gang driving Studebakers and the cops rounding the corner. “They went by in a hurry,” Petzke, 82, told me after reading my June 25 column about a car housed at Historic Auto Attractions in Roscoe used by the Dillinger gang in a robbery. The Studebaker is expected to be seen in “Public Enemies.”

“We kept hearing this ‘pop, pop, pop,’” Petzke said.  “We just wanted to make sure they did not hit us. I just hung on to my dad.”

When the shooting was over, father and son and store staff gathered outside. Bullet holes were found in a sign outside the store. The story about the bank robbery allegedly by the Dillinger crew was a big deal the next day in the South Bend Tribune, he said.

“I’m lucky I didn’t pee in my pants,” said Petzke, who moved to Rockford in 1953 and was an engineering director for WTVO-17 for 44 years.

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