NEW YORK — A woman was killed and two people were wounded early Monday in a shooting near a New York City migrant shelter as a crowd gathered for the results of Venezuela’s presidential election, police said.
A gunman fired on the gathering in a park on Randall’s Island around 3:30 a.m. At least two of the people who were shot — the woman who died and another woman who was injured — were believed to have been living at the shelter, NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said.
The suspected shooter, identified by police as a man upset about a prior robbery, opened fire from about 100 feet (30.5 meters) away and fled on a moped, Chell said. No arrests have been made.
A 44-year-old woman died from gunshot wounds to the face and back, police said. A 31-year-old woman who was shot in the back and a 32-year-old man who was shot in the throat were hospitalized in stable condition. Police have not released their names.
Chell said police believe the shooter was retaliating after he was the victim of an earlier robbery at gunpoint. About 50 people were gathered in an athletic field, a few hundred feet from the shelter where, on any given night, some 3,000 migrants sleep on cots lined up inside huge tents.
“We do know why they were there — many were celebrating the election in Venezuela,” NYPD spokesperson Tarik Sheppard said. But, since the island is open to the public, he said, “there’s no way to determine whether every single person who was out there was definitely staying at this facility.”
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council announced Monday that President Nicolás Maduro had won a third six-year term, beating out retired diplomat Edmundo González. Maduro’s critics dispute that result and thousands of people protested Monday in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas.
Randall’s Island — a spit of parks, fields and government buildings adjacent to Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx — is home to New York City’s largest shelter for asylum seekers.
The shelter opened in August 2023 amid a dramatic influx of migrants as Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered many of them to be bussed from the border directly to Democratic-led cities. Built on sports fields at Randall’s Island’s southern tip, the shelter also includes tents for dining and bathroom facilities.