Brooklyn Assemblyman William Boyland Jr. said he is almost certain that a bullet that shattered the back window of his SUV yesterday and scared his 8-year-old son who was riding in the back seat was not meant for him. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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“The police say it’s a random shooting.” Boyland said outside his Brownsville office, not far from where the shooting took place. “I don’t know what happened. It was very traumatic.”
“It could have struck him,” Deputy Inspector Kim Royster said of the bullet recovered from the car. “It was that close.”
“We are looking at this as a random shooting.”
Boyland, a four-term assemblyman, said he and his son were returning from a barbershop shortly after 6 p.m. when shots rang out along Sutter Avenue near Saratoga Avenue.
“We were turning on to Sutter and stopped at a light,” Boyland said. “As the light changes, three shots rang out. One shot broke out the entire back window of the car. The second shot hit the passenger seat belt and I don’t know how the trajectory happened but it dropped behind me.
“We’re sort of trained unfortunately in this neighborhood. When you hear shots, duck.”
Boyland said he could feel the still-hot bullet behind him in his chair. Then he rushed out of the black GMC Yukon, to check on his son, who was sitting directly behind him.
“Then panic sets it,” Boyland recalled. “I start screaming out his name to find out exactly what happened.”
Neither Boyland nor his son were injured.
Boyland brushed off speculation in the neighborhood that he was targeted for driving by, but not stopping last week at a prayer vigil for 13-year-old Kira Goddard, who was killed July 30 after pushing her friends out of the path of an out-of-control SUV that was being by a man who had been stabbed.
The SUV flipped and landed on the girl. The driver later died.
Boyland also ruled out any connection between the shooting and the federal corruption charges he faces for money he allegedly took from a health network to lobby on its behalf in Albany.
The assemblyman said the community has been suffering too long from random violence.
“We’re survivors,” Boyland said. “We’re very tough people in the neighborhood. But it’s scary. I’m in my community. I’ve grown up here and I’m not afraid of my community.”
