Gov. Andrew Cuomo expressed sadness and outrage Sunday in the wake of a street shooting that has left one of his staff members gravely injured.
"It is so painful, so unnecessary, so sad. I don't know what it's going to take for this nation to come to its senses with gun violence," Cuomo said to reporters while attending the West Indian Day parade Sunday.
Carey W. Gabay, 43, a former attorney in Cuomo's office and now first deputy general counsel for Empire State Development in its New York City office, was attending pre-parade festivities in the early morning hours Sunday in a Crown Heights neighborhood when it appears he was shot once in the head after a spray of bullets came from a fight on the street. Cuomo said it was eight to 10 bullets that were shot during the incident that happened around 3:40 a.m.
Gabay, a Bronx native and Harvard graduate, is in critical condition at Kings County Hospital, the governor's office said. He and his wife, Trenelle, are expecting their first child.
"It's personal to me. I know this young man. So beautiful. So giving. So kind. So unnecessary," Cuomo said. "I was just with the family. And the tears and the frustration. And I'm governor of the state of New York and there's nothing I can say and there's nothing I can do."
Cuomo noted that he championed one of the nation's toughest gun laws in the SAFE Act, a law that in part bans high-capacity magazines and which New York gun rights advocates continue to protest. But he hammered on the continued stagnation of such restrictions on the national stage.
"Anyone who doesn't believe we don't need to do something about gun control is delusional," Cuomo said. "We can protect the Second Amendment and legitimate gun owners, but we also need to protect people. How many young, innocent people have to die before this nation comes to its senses?"
Cuomo is still embarking on his trip Sunday afternoon to Puerto Rico to bring himself and a delegation there to discuss the U.S. territory's economic woes.
(c)2015 the Times Union (Albany, N.Y.)
