Teens wounded in shooting outside New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin's home identified
Two teenagers injured in a shooting outside of the home of New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin have been identified as concerns about crime continue to figure prominently in the upcoming election.
Zeldin, who serves in the U.S. House of Representatives, is seeking to unseat New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul in the Nov. 6 election.
“My 16-year-old daughters, Mikayla and Arianna, were at our house doing homework, while my wife, Diana, and I were in the car, having just departed the Bronx Columbus Day Parade in Morris Park,” Zeldin said in a statement about the shooting outside his home in the Long Island community of Shirley at 2:18 p.m. on Sunday.
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“After my daughters heard the gunshots and the screaming, they ran upstairs, locked themselves in the bathroom and immediately called 911. They acted very swiftly and smartly every step of the way and Diana and I are extremely proud of them.”
Zeldin said the two people “who were shot were laying down under my front porch and the bushes in front of our porch. My understanding is that they have been transported to area hospitals.”
On Monday, the New York Post identified the shooting victims as teenagers Joel Murphy and Elijah Robinson, both from the Long Island community of Mastic.
The victims suffered gunshot wounds to the chest, with Murphy suffering a lacerated liver and Robinson sustaining an arm wound. The shooter remains at large.
While a motive remains unclear, The NY Post reported that investigators were working to determine if the shooting might be related to a “Saturday night feud at a Suffolk County recording studio.”
Zeldin concluded his statement by stressing that his daughters were “shaken but OK,” adding that as with “so many New Yorkers, crime has literally made its way to our front door.” He elaborated on the shooting in an appearance on “Fox & Friends” Monday morning.
“One of the bullets landed about 30 feet from where the girls were doing homework,” he said. “When we were getting back to the house, we had to go through crime scene tape, we were getting advised where to walk so that we weren’t stepping on blood.”
Zeldin's home security cameras recorded the three people who were on his property, two being the victims and a third person who was not shot “moving all around the property up and down the porch a couple times” and “through the front yard.”
The shooting outside Zeldin’s home comes less than three months after a man attempted to stab Zeldin as he held a rally in upstate New York.
“The male had a weapon in his hand, swung it toward Zeldin’s neck, and told him, ‘You’re done,’” stated the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office in July regarding the attack. “Members of the audience and Rep. Zeldin’s campaign restrained the male until deputies arrived and took him into custody. There were no injuries.”
While Zeldin and Republicans have made crime a significant focus of their campaigns in New York and across the U.S., concerns about public safety extend to Democrats as well.
In a recent appearance on WABC Radio, former New York Gov. David Paterson, a Democrat, declared “For the first time in my life, even in the late '80s and '90s when the crime rate was killing 2,000 people a year, I never felt as unsafe as I do now just walking around.”
Polling indicates that Zeldin faces an uphill battle to become New York’s first Republican governor since George Pataki left office in 2007. The RealClearPolitics average of polls taken since the beginning of September shows Hochul with an 11.4-point lead over Zeldin.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
