Members of indie rock band Yellow Dogs were gunned down in their Brooklyn apartment early Monday morning, by fellow former bandmate Ali Akbar Mohammadi Rafie. Rafie opened fire and murdered three of his friends, following years of personal strife.
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Members of Yellow Dogs and the band Free Keys, all Iranian immigrants seeking asylum, were involved in the triple murder in Brooklyn, New York. The lone survivor of the melee, Pooya Hosseini(Free Keys), recently spoke to The New York Times, describing the moments leading up to, and during the homicidal attack.
According to Hosseini, Rafie was a longtime childhood friend who immigrated to the United States with Hosseini several years ago. While Hosseini and the majority of his friends embraced the Brooklyn, alternative culture, and American ideals, Rafie did not easily follow the pack. By day he was a bicycle messenger, by night was known to wander the streets, hop turnstiles and engage in petty theft. The two men became estranged following Rafie’s dismissal from the band.
While lying in his top floor bedroom, Hosseini heard the gunfire and hid under a coat rack in his bedroom.
Mr. Hosseini listened to the gunfire. Then his door crashed open.
First all he saw was the gun, and then he focused on Mr. Rafie’s face, wild-eyed, not with anger but with a strange beatific purpose, an almost happy demeanor.
“ ‘You think my bullets are not going to go through those coats and your body and the wall?’ ” Mr. Hosseini recalled, using English to recount Mr. Rafie’s words, which had been spoken in Persian. “I said, ‘Definitely, sure, but don’t kill me. Just let me talk to you.’ ”
For the next several minutes, they spoke, Mr. Rafie, pointing the end of a .308 caliber, Spanish-made assault rifle at Mr. Hosseini, still crouched on the floor.
“He asked me, ‘What happened to us?’ ” Mr. Hosseini recalled.
Following their confrontation, Hosseini begged for his life, pleading with his former friend to let them talk before he was to die. With police sirens growing closer, the men were soon battling for the murder weapon.
“I was just saying whatever came to my mind. To just make the time pass because I heard the cops,” he said.
Mr. Rafie heard the sirens, too. When Mr. Rafie turned his head, Mr. Hosseini grabbed the barrel of the gun and, as they wrestled over the weapon for several moments, bullets sprayed into the ceiling and the floor.
Knowing his demise was imminent, Rafie headed for the roof. As Hosseini headed downstairs to the police, he heard a final shot ring out from up above.
“I really wish he didn’t kill himself,” Mr. Hosseini said. “When somebody kills himself, he makes it easy for himself. I didn’t want it to be easy. I wish he was in jail for all of his life.”
From Koory and Obaash: still in shock, we lost 3 of our brothers, Soroush Farazmand, Arash Farazmand and Ali Eskandarian, Rest In Peace
— The Yellow Dogs (@YellowDogsband) November 12, 2013
Get to know the slain members and Hasseini in this 2009 interview with CNN.
