Booze Cruise Shooting Sparks Petition To Kick Boat Out Of The Bay
A weekend shooting on the Golden Sunshine, a dinner-cruise boat featuring alcohol-fueled late-night parties, has led fed up residents to launch a petition for the boat’s relocation.
Brooklyn Daily covered the shooting:
Gunfire punctuated a rowdy booze cruise in Sheepshead Bay last week when party-goers got into a tussle on Emmons Avenue, rattling neighbors who say the frequent bashes on the boat are getting out of control.
The trouble started when two men began arguing before the Golden Sunshine, a party ship advertised as “One big boat filled with all bad [female dogs],” set sail around midnight on Oct. 8, according to Kemar Wilson, whose entertainment company rents out the 350-person catamaran for weekend parties.
One of the angry combatants stayed behind, Wilson said, and when the double-decker ship returned three hours later, he confronted his rival and fired the weapon into the air near the boat’s berth at Pier Two, on Emmons between Bedford Avenue and E. 26th Street.
No one was injured in the shooting. The NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Information responded to Sheepshead Bites’ request for information by confirming that officers responded to the incident, but found no evidence of ballistics, no suspect, no witnesses and no victim – in effect, no evidence that shots were fired.
Still, in addition to Wilson’s account to the Brooklyn Daily, neighbors say that gunshots certainly rang out that night.
“I and my family and neighbors were awakened around 3 a.m. to loud gunfire, like a shotgun blasts,” recounted a resident who lives near Pier Two, where the Golden Sunshine docks. The resident asked not to have his name published out of concern for his family’s safety. “I came out only to be told by numerous cops to get back inside the house. My neighbor saw a man yielding a shotgun right in front of our homes and we heard three blasts. Cops searched our backyards and moved on towards Shore Parkway. People were screaming on Emmons Avenue.”
The booze-cruises – and the crowd that it brings – have been a frequent complaint at 61st Precinct Community Council meetings, as well as meetings of the Sheepshead Bay – Plumb Beach Civic Association. In recent years, the precinct has bulked up manpower on Emmons Avenue, but the city has not attempted to limit the activities of the boat operators or party promoters, nor have they indicated willingness to remove them from the Bay. All of the marine vessels that use the Parks Department-owned piers along Emmons Avenue pay the city for the privilege.
The city’s lack of action has taken its toll on fed up neighbors, who are now circulating a petition to residents who live near the piers to have the Golden Sunshine – which they say is a frequent offender – moved to the western end of the Bay, or kicked out altogether.
“His clientele have been destroying our quality of life all summer,” the resident told Sheepshead Bites via e-mail. “We have had it up to our eyeballs with his ‘clients’ parking in hydrants, blocking our driveways, stashing their booze bottles in our shrubs, peeing in our doorways and now gunfire!”
The resident did not say how readers could sign his petition.
