“Cairnes was so mad,” said Mr. Hershkowitz, 90 and now retired, who saw parallels to the fatal shooting of Walter L. Scott by Officer Michael T. Slager in North Charleston, S.C., on April 4. A witness’s video recorded Mr. Scott running away from a traffic stop and the officer firing eight shots at his back. Officer Slager has been charged with murder.

The killing of Mr. Hollis, according to a transcript of the coroner’s inquisition, stemmed from a dispute on Nov. 9, 1858, when the longshoreman and a mate visited the St. Charles, a ship sailing between New York and Le Havre, France, and asked to work as crewmen.

Mr. Hollis was later described in The Times as a ruffian with arrests for assaults and other “atrocious violence,” including a fight that cost him an eye.

Capt. Thomas Conway told the pair he had a full crew.

They accosted the captain in the street the next day and asked again. When Captain Conway again refused, he later testified, they followed him to his ship where, The Times wrote, “deceased called me a s-n of a b-h and said he would stow himself on board the vessel and murder me on the voyage.” When Mr. Hollis hurled a brick at Captain Conway, the captain chased them off at gunpoint and sent for the police.

Tracked down nearby by Officer Cairnes and Captain Conway, and being escorted to court at the Tombs, Mr. Hollis “suddenly turned upon the officer and struck him a violent blow, knocking him down and then ran away,” the captain testified.

Officer Cairnes, in pursuit, fired two shots, the first ball rattling among the barrels where a cooper, John Thrall, worked. The second whizzed past the ear of a passer-by, William Gage, who objected, “For God’s sake, don’t fire, or you will kill someone,” according to a transcript of a coroner’s inquisition.

By this time, the cooper had seized Mr. Hollis, but, suddenly afraid, let go. Charles W. Degendorf, a cartman at Fulton Market, grabbed Mr. Hollis’s collar and held him.