Man shot in head in drive-by shooting on NYC street outside office of soft-on-crime state lawmaker

A man was shot Monday in a drive-by shooting outside the New York City office of state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D), who has been criticized as being soft on crime, according to reports. 

A man was shot in the head just after 3 p.m. on Gun Hill Road and Fenton Avenue in the Bronx, the New York Police Department told Fox News Digital. The victim was rushed to Jacobi Hospital Medical Center in critical condition. 

No arrests have been made and the NYPD has not determined how many shots were fired or a motive, a police spokesperson said. 

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The shooting occurred near Heastie’s office, the New York Post reported. A staffer for the lawmaker told the newspaper they called 911 and said “I heard the shooting.”

Fos News Digital has reached out to Heastie’s office. 

It was unclear if lawmaker was inside his office at the time. Heastie, the Democratic leader of the Assembly, has been a supporter of criminal justice reforms and has fought back against Mayor Eric Adams’ effort to roll back some measures, the paper said. 

Some of the reforms bar judges from setting bail in some cases, which many have said puts violent criminals back onto the streets only to re-offend. Heastie has argued since at least 2018 that setting high cash bails for individuals accused of low-level crimes creates wealth and race disparities and that eliminating bail would not increase violent crime.

“A non-violent thief who can post $3,000 bail is no more threatening than one who can’t,” he said in a January 2020 tweet. “The money is irrelevant; being poor doesn’t make a defendant inherently more dangerous. But as practiced, NY’s legal system has long operated as if poverty equals danger.”

Fox News’ Audrey Conklin contributed to this report.