Long Island congressman and Republican candidate for governor Lee Zeldin said two people were shot outside his Shirley home Sunday, but that his family is safe.
Further details indicate that the two people who were shot were found under his porch and in the bushes in front of his home. Zeldin told the New York Post there was blood on a rock next to his porch.
He said he did not know them, but that the wounded were taken to hospitals.
Zeldin said gunshots were fired outside his house around 2:18 p.m. Sunday. “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.
The Congressman said his daughters heard the shots and screams and bolted upstairs, locking themselves in a bathroom and called 911.
Praising his daughters’ quick thinking, he said, “They acted very swiftly and smartly every step of the way and Diana and I are extremely proud of them”.
“My daughters are shaken, but ok,” he said, later tweeting that a bullet landed 30 feet from them.
Suffolk police told The Associated Press they are investigating the shooting and reviewing security footage.
Zeldin is running against Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, and has made rising crime and violent crime a platform of his campaign.
“Like so many New Yorkers, crime has literally made its way to our front door,” Zeldin said.
The shooting comes after he was attacked in July while campaigning in upstate New York. In that incident, a man approached him onstage and thrust a sharp object near his head and neck. He was unharmed, and the man was arrested.
Zeldin, 46, represented the 1st congressional district for seven years.
