State v. Hoag

The opinion of the court was delivered by

Wachenfeld, J.

At about 3 p. m. in the afternoon of September 20, 1950, three or four patrons, one of whom was Elmer S. Yager, were seated at the bar of Gay’s Tavern on Bergen Boulevard in Fairview, New Jersey, sipping beer and observing a telecast of a baseball game. The tranquility of that scene was interrupted by three men, each carrying a gun, entering through the front door of the tavern. One of them brusquely announced: “This is a stick-up, everybody line up against the wall.” The patrons, together with the owner of the tavern, proceeded to do as…