Flushing slay victim was ‘sweetest, kindest man’

A month after 75-year-old Albert (“Avrumie”) Itzkowitz was gunned in a Flushing park, his family says that the still-unsolved murder was an act of Jew-hatred.

“Myself and my family feel this is an antisemitic attack,” his youngest son, Tzvi Yonie Itzkowitz, told JNS. “It happened in broad daylight, and we want some semblance of closure, and we want to know what happened.”

In its first interview with any media outlet since the May 18 murder, the family said that investigators have yet to identify a suspect or publicly explain a motive.

“My dad deserves justice,” Itzkowitz said.

The shooting left Kew Gardens Hill resident, a longtime baker and mashgiach, dead near the lake in Kissena Park in Flushing, a place he frequented regularly. He was found shortly before 5 pm with gunshot wounds to his neck and back and pronounced dead at the scene.

His murder, less than three weeks after Avrumie Itzkowitz lost his wife to cancer, was ruled a homicide.

“She was diagnosed in January,” Itzkowitz said. “We lost her April 30.”

Avrumie Itzkowitz for decades worked in his family’s G&I Kosher Bakery on Main Street, which his parents opened in the early 1960s, when the area’s Orthodox Jewish growth was still in its infancy.

“He was the sweetest, kindest man, always had a smile on his face for everybody,” Itzkowitz said. “Family and friends alike. He was just the sweetest, simple man.”

He said, “I have memories growing up in the bakery,” which his father sold it when he was 8 years old. “A walk from the bakery to the house could take three times as long as it should just because he was talking to people on the street,” he recalled.

Avrumie Itzkowitz was also a member of the Queens Hatzalah for many years.

“When Queens Hatzalah was first starting in the neighborhood, there was a push for local business owners to join, because they were there, they were on Main Street, they were in the neighborhood at all times,” Itzkowitz said.

“He happily joined and was part of it for many, many years,” he said.

Avrumie Itzkowitz is survived by five married children and 21 grandchildren — a number that includes the spouses of three of his 18 biological grandchildren, whom he considered his grandchildren, according to his son.

After repeated calls to his father went unanswered on May 18, family members grew concerned.Hours later, a sister attempting to reach him on FaceTime instead found herself speaking with someone who identified himself as a member of the New York City Police Department.

“For about an hour, an hour and a half, we’re just sitting at the kitchen table with nothing,” Itzkowitz said. “Our minds were racing. I was thinking maybe he passed out. Maybe he got lost. We had no idea.”

The family says that investigators have remained in regular contact and have been “very kind and sympathetic,” but that no information has emerged in the weeks since the killing.

“They told us they went around the whole neighboring area collecting video from neighbors’ cameras and street cameras,” Itzkowitz said. “But there’s no video in the park proper, which is a problem here.”

The family believes that the circumstances surrounding the killing point to an antisemitic motive.

“The family immediately thought that, in broad daylight, in a safe neighborhood, visibly Jewish, yarmulke, beard, and his beard was even longer than usual because we were grieving my mom —” Itzkowitz said, trailing off.

“We think it was antisemitic,” he told JNS.

Kissena Park was a place his father “considered safe,” Itzkowitz said. “We all did.”

The killing has shaken the community and heightened safety concerns.

Itzkowitz noted that Jews account for a disproportionate share of hate-crime victims in New York City.

Though he described his father as a humble man, rather than a “celebrity,” Itzkowitz said the case deserves greater public attention.

“He was such a good person, and so kind and sweet and nice and smiled for everybody,” he said. “If there were more resources or more people on this and more attention to it as a hate crime, it could lead to more resources on the case.

“I feel, and the family feels, that a visibly Jewish Orthodox man gunned down in broad daylight — we feel is an antisemitic attack,” he said.