Two Fathers Gunned Down as Daughters Watch
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Four men were killed during a violent Halloween weekend marked by a string of bold shootings across the city — including two in which
fathers were shot in front of their daughters.
• A Columbia-educated orthodontist was shot and killed while walking with his 4-year-old daughter near a playground in Forest
Hills, Queens.
• A Bronx man was shot and killed when intruders burst into the apartment where he was with his 12-year-old daughter.
• A crowd of would-be customers shot and killed a Bronx bartender who refused to serve them at closing time.
• Four people were shot in East New York in a single incident that left one dead and three with minor injuries yesterday evening.
In one attack, the weapon of choice wasn’t a handgun, but an umbrella.
A man walking along Metropolitan Avenue near Berry Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, at around 2 a.m. yesterday discarded his tangled umbrella in annoyance, hitting a passing car, according to a police account.
Two men jumped out of the vehicle, and attacked the unidentified man with the umbrella. The men left the umbrella “embedded in his back,”
before fleeing in a light-colored vehicle, police said.
A few hours later, a rowdy group of men approached the Bronx Cocktails Bar on Westchester Avenue in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx and asked the bartender, Raymond Barnett, 38, to serve them a drink. It was after 4 a.m., and Mr. Barnett, who was closing the bar he both owned and tended, turned them away, police officials said.
The group of men returned moments later with a gun and shot through the bar’s front window. A bullet hit Barnett in the neck and another hit him in the torso, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Neighbors in area said they were shocked to hear of a shooting in the mostly residential area dotted with family-owned Italian restaurants and small businesses. The bar, flanked by a florist and a Chinese restaurant, had opened a year earlier, and had quickly become a neighborhood favorite, several residents said.
“That stuff doesn’t happen, not in Pelham Bay,” a waitress who works at Giovanni’s Restaurant down the block, Sandy Maione, 27, said.
The group of men fled in a black Cadillac, according to police.
The next shooting happened near a Forest Hills playground, as Daniel Malakov, a Columbia University-trained orthodontist, was walking with his 4-year-old daughter to drop her off with her mother at around 11 a.m. yesterday.
“She saw her father murdered right in front of her,” Malakov’s sister said of the little girl, whose name is being withheld. “We’re just in shock.”
Malakov and the girl’s mother had gone through a bitter divorce two years ago, after Malakov’s mother-in-law moved into their home, according to an account by family members.
After a protracted custody battle, relatives said Malakov had won full custody of their daughter seven days ago. Malakov agreed to share care of their daughter despite the court order, but Malakov’s sister said the mother had not taken the news well.
Both husband and wife are immigrants from Uzbekistan. The mother could not be reached for comment.
A resident of a building across from the playground, David Davydov, 53, said the area is usually bustling with children and families. Mr. Davydov said he heard two shots, and looked out his apartment window to see two small children running away from the playground.
He said the body was obscured by a car, but later saw paramedics carrying Malakov away on a stretcher.
“I saw two small children running away; they were scared and running. I think the children saw who did it,” Mr. Davydov said. “It’s very scary.”
Malakov lived about four blocks from the park where he was shot on 64th Road, and his medical office was down the street. He was found with two gunshot wounds to the chest, and was pronounced dead at the hospital.
The girl is currently in the custody of her mother, sources said.
Another little girl witnessed the shooting of her father, Ollie Jones, 50, just two hours after the Forest Hills incident. The girl, who is 12, was at home with her father in an apartment on Longfellow Avenue in the Bronx when there was a knock at the door, according to a police account.
The girl answered the door, and three men burst in and began arguing with Jones, police said.
“They shot my father,” Jones’s daughter said. “They came in, and they had guns.”
The three men also took some jewelry and other items in the house before they fled the apartment, according to police, who said the men may have been known to the victim.
After they left, the girl called the 911. Police said Jones had been shot in the torso. He died a few hours later at Lincoln Hospital.
Police are searching for suspects in all four incidents.