Officer Dennis Crane was shot and killed by a suspect who was firing a shotgun around near the Alexian Brothers Hospital at Broadway and Osage Streets.

On May 31, 1900 at approximately 11:30 pm, Sergeant Lucey, Officers McNichols, Crane and Maher tried to locate the source of the gunshots in the area of the St Alexius Brothers Hospital. The officers found the intoxicated suspect, Alfred T. Koenig, standing in the middle of the street, in the area of Broadway and Osage, armed with a double barreled shotgun and calling out that he was a union man. Officer Crane approached Koenig and ordered him to drop the shotgun. Koenig abruptly shot Officer Crane in the chest. Officer Crane was taken to the Alexian Brothers Hospital where he died from his injuries at 3:00 am.

Sergeant Lucey and the other officers pursued Koenig as he ran into the back room of the Ess & Son saloon. The officers closed with Koenig and during the exchange Officer Maher shot Koenig in the chest. Koenig died at the scene. Koenig had an extensive history of mental illness.

The suspect had reportedly been drinking in a local saloon, carrying a shotgun around the area, occasionally firing it off and had been told to go home by police officers more than once.

This Officer Crane murder occurrred during difficult times in St Louis. The street car strike from May to September of 1900 resulted in riot conditions across the city. On the first day of the strike, May 9, the St. Louis Republic reported a full page of riot conditions across the entire city. The Board of Police Commissioners swore in 2,500 citizens in a posse comitatus commanded by a local realty agent, John H. Cavender, who had played a similar paramilitary role in the bloody 1877 Saint Louis general strike.

Officer Crane, 28, was survived by his wife and son, a brother, Father Patrick Crane of St Mary and St Joseph's Church and brother, Officer Jerry Crane, of the Central District. Interred: Calvary Cemetery.