A month after 75-year-old Albert (“Avrumie”) Itzkowitz was gunned down in broad daylight near the heart of his Queens neighborhood, 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 shooting, the family told JNS that investigators have yet to identify a suspect or publicly explain a motive.

“My dad deserves justice,” Itzkowitz said.

The shooting left the longtime baker and mashgiach, or kosher supervisor, dead near the lake in Flushing’s Kissena Park, a place he frequented regularly. He was found shortly before 5 p.m. with gunshot wounds to his neck and back and pronounced dead at the scene.

His death was ruled a homicide, but no arrests have been made.

The killing came less than three weeks after Avrumie Itzkowitz lost his wife to cancer, his son said.

“We had lost my mom two-and-a-half weeks before my dad,” Itzkowitz told JNS. “She was diagnosed in January. We lost her April 30, just a couple weeks before my dad.”

Beloved in the close-knit Queens neighborhood of Kew Gardens Hills, Avrumie Itzkowitz spent decades working in his family’s kosher eatery, G&I Kosher Bakery on Main Street, which his parents opened in the early 1960s—back when the area’s Orthodox Jewish community was still in its infancy.

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

He still has vivid memories of the bakery, which his father sold when he was 8 years old.

“I have memories growing up in the bakery,” he said. “Sitting on the counter in the back, eating icing straight out of the piping tube.”

“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 told JNS.

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 told JNS.

‘We had no idea’

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.

Memories of his father’s final day remain fresh for Itzkowitz.

“When my dad was murdered—I’m still getting used to saying that word—I was at work that day, and I got a call from my brother,” he said.

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 told JNS. “But there’s no video in the park proper, which is a problem here.”

According to police, investigators have conducted an extensive video canvass of the surrounding area, but no arrests have been made, and no suspect has been publicly identified.

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 concerns about safety.

“This is somewhere where we thought was safe, and it hits so close to home, because it’s literally a mile, mile and a half away from us,” Itzkowitz told JNS. “He was there all the time. It was very close to the neighborhood, very close to the house, very close to his work, where he’d worked for the last 20 years.”

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

“It’s an area that we’ve felt was safe, and it’s very concerning,” he said.

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 told JNS.

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