By Rebecca Henely
Astoria residents were shocked by the shooting of two women Monday morning, saying such a crime was nearly unheard of on the quiet residential street near Ditmars Boulevard.
“It’s a good area with very good people,” said a resident who stopped for coffee at a Dunkin’ Donuts on 38th Street and Ditmars Boulevard.
Two women were shot in the head in a house on 38th Street between Ditmars Boulevard and 23rd Avenue sometime around 9 a.m., according to Breaking News Network. Police were searching for a white man in a green jacket in connection with the crime, BNN reported.
NYPD has yet to release information on the shooting .
Billy Saketos, 37, who was walking his 4-year-old daughter to school when he heard the shots, said the women were a Russian mother and daughter.
“I didn’t know where the shots came from, so I picked up my daughter and ran,” Saketos said.
He said when he came back to the scene, he saw the women on stretchers.
Police had the street cordoned off well into the morning, leaving neighbors and shoppers along Ditmars to try to reconstruct the scene.
One woman said while she did not think the victims were her cousins, her cousins lived on the block and she was worried.
Jenny, who works at a laundromat on Ditmars and declined to give her last name, said she wanted to know who the victims were because they were probably customers.
She said the last shooting she remembered in the area happened more than a decade ago at the supermarket next to the Laundromat.
“Over here we usually don’t have crimes,” Jenny said.
Resident Joan Petrillo said it was always quiet in the area but that crimes happen everywhere.
“Always around the holidays, things happen.” Petrillo said.
Reach reporter Rebecca Henely by e-mail at rhenely@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4564.
