Hawthorne Inn motorcade attack was a Indian Wars and Frontier Conflicts engagement fought in Illinois, 1926.
North Side gunmen under Hymie Weiss mounted a daylight motorcade attack on Al Capone's Cicero headquarters at the Hawthorne Inn, raking the hotel and its restaurant with hundreds of rounds from a procession of automobiles carrying submachine guns. Capone escaped by taking cover, and the spectacular assault, one of the largest coordinated shooting attacks of the beer wars, demonstrated both the firepower now available to the factions and their willingness to fight openly in a crowded street. The attack was a direct answer to Weiss's war with Capone following O'Banion's murder, and Capone's retaliation weeks later would kill Weiss himself. Contemporary reports likened the caravan barrage to a military engagement, and it hardened public alarm over Chicago's ungovernable Prohibition violence.
Approximate location. The nearest recorded settlement is shown; the exact site is unrecorded.
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