Police are looking for three people on dirt bikes who wounded a church worker in a drive-by shooting on Tuesday afternoon.
According to the NYPD, Raphael Benjamin, 49, was outside his building on West 118th Street, "when three suspects approached on dirt bikes and one of the suspects shot at him. The victim sustained a graze wound to his head. The suspects then fled on dirt bikes east bound on West 118th Street."
Benjamin was taken to St. Luke's Hospital, and is thankful to be alive. He told WABC 7, "I got two holes in my head. It went in one end and out the other way... This happened so fast that I don't know who they were shooting at or why, but I know it wasn't me."
Police released images of the suspects—one male was wearing a tan coat and driving a green and white dirt bike; a second male, wearing a blue denim jacket over a brown hoodie with green pants, black socks and white sneakers, was riding as a passenger on the green and white dirt bike; and a third male wearing a red sweater was riding solo on a white and black dirt bike.
The victim is a maintenance worker at the Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem. Rev. Thomas Johnson said to WABC 7, "Everybody loves him. He works very hard... The police officer who was with [Benjamin] shared with him, two more inches, you would be in the morgue in the ER, so he was very emotional about that, he talked about his son and who would take care of his son."
Anyone with information in regards to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 800-577-TIPS. The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers Website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or texting their tips to 274637(CRIMES) then enter TIP577.
