Something More Than Murder

Doyle Murphy: CITY OF NEWBURGH — A tall, slim 15-year-old died with a bullet in his body late Tuesday night, three years after the same thing happened to his brother.

Jeffrey Zachary was talking to friends in front of 27 Dubois St. about 10:20 p.m. when a car drove past. A gunman fired through the window. One bullet hit a tree. Another hit Jeffrey.

Jeffrey's sister, Tova, had just finished doing a friend's hair when she heard the shots. She came outside to find Jeffrey lying on the sidewalk and knelt by his side.

Jeffrey, stay, she pleaded. Don't go.

Others nearby flagged down a Mobile Life ambulance leaving St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital less than two blocks away. Jeffrey was unconscious when the ambulance took him, and he died an hour later. It was too much like last time.

"It seems like a movie," Tova said yesterday, "That's what it seems like, like deja vu."