Man shot dead on Main Street in Port Jefferson, Suffolk police say

An argument between two men in the heart of Port Jefferson Village Wednesday afternoon ended with one of them fatally shot and the other driving away, Suffolk police and the mayor said.

The 3:35 p.m. slaying occurred on Main Street near West Broadway, police said.

Homicide detectives were investigating, cops said.

"We are deeply saddened by this event today. This is not who we are in Port Jeff," Mayor Margot Garant said Wednesday night. "I'm saddened it happened in broad daylight on a village street."

Neither the victim's nor the suspect's identity were immediately available Wednesday night and police had not announced an arrest.

Garant said she had been briefed by Suffolk police investigators about the shooting. She said it stemmed from a disagreement between the men.

"Two individuals had an argument," Garant said. "One went back to his vehicle and took out a firearm."

One gunshot was fired, the mayor said.

The suspected gunman was last seen in a vehicle on Route 25A westbound in the Stony Brook area, the mayor said. Neither the suspect nor the victim were from Port Jefferson, she said.

Garant said a camera, near the scene of the deadly shooting, is directly linked to Suffolk police and should help homicide detectives with their investigation.

"It's going to be crystal clear," she said. "It's hooked directly to the precinct, so we are confident they're going to have the intelligence they need."

The last fatal shooting in the 4-square-mile village of about 9,700 residents occurred in October 2019, also on Main Street, and not far from Wednesday's.

Port Jefferson resident Theodore Scoville, 50, was fatally shot by the owner of a Main Street liquor store, police said at the time.

The 2019 shooting was a "clear case of self-defense," police said. Scoville walked into the store and swung a samurai sword at a close distance to the store owner who then fired a single shot, police said.

Port Jefferson Trustee Stan Loucks said after Wednesday's deadly shooting: "It’s a very peaceful, small village. For something like this to happen is very upsetting … as quaint as we are in Port Jefferson, we are not immune to that kind of activity. There’s too much of that going on right now."