The frightened woman inside a Greenwich Village apartment when masked bandits stormed inside and shot two suspected drug dealers recalled the harrowing moment when she thought she would die.
The 27-year-old crouched in the corner of a bedroom as the men posing as customers burst into the Bleecker St. home late Monday and shot her friends - one of them the son of a top NYU fund-raiser.
"They busted the door down in the bedroom," she told the Daily News on Wednesday night. "It was the most terrifying, horrifying experience I've ever been in."
The two men demanded cash before one of them pulled out a handgun and shot both Alexander Bongard, 24, and his ex-con pal, 31-year-old Lucas Hinde, in the chest.
"I was hiding under a chair and they shot Luke," said the woman, who asked not to be identified because the bandits were still on the loose. "He was begging them not to shoot. He said he had a son."
But the heartless man fired anyway.
Hinde "walked towards the bedroom, grabbed the wall and collapsed," she said. "I saw the blood and I screamed."
She tried to cover the sound with her palm, but it was too late. The room went still.
"There's another one," she heard one hood say.
Paralyzed in fear, she expected to take a bullet until the man's partner said they had to split.
"And then they left," she said. "It was a miracle."
But first the pair grabbed the woman's handbag and stuffed it full of cash, she said.
Wednesday night, Bongard's mom, Debra LaMorte - who runs NYU's $2.6 billion development campaign - remained at her son's Bellevue Hospital bedside.
"I am only focused on two things," LaMorte said, "his making a full recovery, and the NYPD catching the gunmen who shot my son."
Bongard, a former NYU student, and Hinde are expected to survive.
Both men could face criminal charges, police said.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/11/04/2010-11-04_woman_tells_news_of_horrifying_experience_as_witness_in_village_apt_hid_while_pa.html#ixzz14JodG4d3
Alex is a personal friend of my amd I am so disheartened by what has happened. LEGALIZE MARIJUANA and maybe this kind of crime would not happen. Alex we love you.
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