The Inmates Who Ran Into the Wreckage on Rikers Island

On the evening of February 1, 1957, Northeast Airlines Flight 823 lifted off from LaGuardia Airport bound for Miami with 101 people aboard. Climbing through snow clouds on instruments, the Douglas DC-6A drifted off its assigned heading, lost altitude, and crashed into Rikers Island roughly a minute after takeoff. Twenty people died and 78 more were hurt. Before city firefighters and ambulances could cross onto the jail island, inmates broke toward the burning plane and started pulling survivors out. Fifty seven of them took part, and the city and state answered with something rare for the era: paroles, sentence reductions, and outright commutations for the men who ran toward the wreck.