News: Father’s Day Shooting in Medford
(Long Island, N.Y.) A shooting occurred at a Medford pharmacy leaving four people dead on Father’s Day. One of the victims was a seventeen-year-old girl who had been preparing to graduate high school in the coming days. A memorial was held today for the victims, allowing loved ones to grieve after yesterday’s incident shocked the community.
The shooting occurred at roughly twenty minutes past ten on Sunday at Haven Drugs, a family-owned pharmacy on Southaven Avenue. Among the victims was a forty-five-year-old pharmacist from Centereach, a thirty-three-year-old customer from Farmingville, and a seventy-one-year-old customer from Medford. The seventeen-year-old victim and pharmacy assistant was a student at Bellport High School, set to attend Wednesday’s prom.
Religious candles representing the sacred heart of Jesus were placed among pink and purple flowers to honor the victims in Medford. The area is a middle-class hamlet, located roughly sixty miles east of New York City in a subdued community easily shaken by the tragedy. Angered residents quickly wished severe punishment on the shooter, as some hoped for justice to come through the death penalty.
The seventeen-year-old victim was just five minutes from her home at the time of the shooting. She was a good student who wanted to study medicine at Suffolk Community College. Her shift started at ten that morning and she had been covering for a co-worker.
Reports stated that she wished her father a quick “Happy Father’s Day” before heading to work, believing she’d be returning home to celebrate. Roughly twenty minutes after she left, her family received a call alerting them that something was wrong at the pharmacy. After they rushed to see what happened, the grief-stricken father was presented with the heartbreaking task of identifying his daughter as one of the dead.
The victim’s seventeen-year-old sister also worked at the pharmacy but had taken Sunday off. At the time of the incident, a witness alerted emergency responders about hearing gunfire in the parking lot. Police and authorities on the case believe that the man robbed the pharmacy of prescription drugs, and claimed that he is still at large, armed, and extremely dangerous.
Surveillance video shows the man inside the pharmacy. He is a thin white man with short dark hair, mustache, and beard. His height is five-feet-and-eight-inches and he was seen wearing a white baseball hat, sunglasses, blue jeans, and a dark-colored hooded sweatshirt.
He had been carrying a handgun and is in his late twenties to early thirties. He fled the pharmacy with a backpack and police are offering a five-thousand-dollar reward through Crime Stoppers for information leading to his arrest. Some reports stated that the store’s owner had to be taken in an ambulance after arriving at the scene.
