On Monday, a late-afternoon drive-by shooting severely injured a 20-year-old man, who was shot in the head outside state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie’s Gun Hill Road constituency office in the East Bronx. An oft-busy office teeming with staffers and constituents, Monday’s shooting was a sanguineous scene, marked off by police tape and the victim’s bloodstained baseball cap.
The speaker confirmed that he was in Albany at the time of the shooting, and on Tuesday, the longtime lawmaker called for stricter actions to address gun proliferation and violence. Heastie is currently in the thick of state budget talks — originally due April 1 but has since been extended three times by state lawmakers — with debates brewing over Gov. Kathy Hochul’s changes to the state’s bail law, a housing plan and other policy issues the governor had included in her budget proposal.
“Sadly, in this instance, another young person of color has fallen victim to gun violence,” said Heastie in a statement. “As I have said repeatedly, we must stop focusing on the symptoms of crime and treat the disease. We must address the scourge of guns and gun violence plaguing our country, and this is yet another example of the urgent need to act.”
As many as 10 shots were fired from a white BMW sedan on Gun Hill Road and Fenton Avenue at around 3 p.m., with multiple gunmen targeting the unidentified 20 year old, who was brought to Jacobi Medical Center in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the head. His condition was later upgraded to stable, sources said.
According to police sources, a staffer in Heastie’s 1446 Gun Hill Road office called police after the shots were fired.
This isn’t the first shooting to take place outside a Bronx constituency office. Last May, two separate shootings occurred in consecutive weeks outside the Morris Avenue constituency office of City Councilmember Pierina Sanchez.
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