News: Details of the Medford Shooting
(Long Island, N.Y.) Police and authorities released detailed information about the video and audio surveillance taken from the pharmacy footage of the Medford shooting. The evidence implicates the suspected gunman who had been wearing a disguise at the time of the robbery. It’s likely that the video will not be released publicly out of respect to the four victims and their loved ones.
The video begins with a normal conversation between the forty-five-year-old pharmacist and the seventeen-year-old assistant. The pair had been making small talk about what they did the night before. The soon-to-be high school graduate had mentioned the dress her mother was planning to wear for the ceremony and the mass she attended the previous evening.
That exchange proved to be the last words she spoke, as the video soon captures the killer entering the pharmacy with a black backpack. He then places the backpack on the pharmacy counter and keeps his right hand inside. Police and authorities on the case believe that he had his hand on the murder weapon, a .45 caliber pistol.
The killer then engages in a normal conversation about drug interactions and suggests to the young assistant that he wished to speak alone with the pharmacist. She complies by exiting and walking into an adjoining alcove while the pharmacist continues to talk with him. The video then captures the backpack beginning to rise as the killer prepares to fire without any demands for drugs or money.
Shots are then fired through the backpack, and police believe that the killer had held the weapon on its side. Bullets fire into the pharmacist, striking him in the abdomen, but the video clearly captures him making movements and noises. Authorities believe that the pharmacist was alive when the killer moved to execute his next victim.
The video captures the killer taking the gun out of the backpack as he walked into a blind-spot where the footage is limited to audio. The helpless assistant is trapped within the alcove as he moves towards her. Screams are heard in addition to the firing of two loud shots.
After exiting the alcove, the killer then creeps upon the pharmacist and shoots him twice in the face at point-blank range while he is still moving. He then hides near the front door in an aisle as the seventy-one-year-old customer enters the store. He sneaks directly behind the victim before firing into the back of his head.
After walking over the victim, he goes behind the counter and begins to stuff drugs in his backpack. He hides between the aisles when the thirty-three-year-old customer enters the store and walks toward the pharmacy. Once again, the killer ambushes the final victim and shoots her in the back of the head.
In a desperate attempt to remove evidence, the killer wipes the counter with his long-sleeved black-hooded sweatshirt and inadvertently disregards the paper containing his fingerprints. Two separate prints of his left index finger are left to be recovered by investigators.
