Cops: Missouri man dead, 2 others wounded in North Amityville shooting

A Missouri man was fatally shot and two other men were wounded in a fight outside a Masonic lodge in North Amityville early Saturday, Suffolk County police said.

Louis Wilson, 44, of Kansas City, was shot in the chest in front of Hollywood Lodge No. 92 about 2 a.m. and died at a nearby hospital, police said.

Two other men survived gunshot wounds and were taken to hospitals, police said. They were shot in the legs, according to a North Amityville Fire Department official.

Suffolk police said they were searching for the shooter Saturday night and did not identify the surviving men.

The three victims were brothers, said a woman who identified herself as a cousin but declined to give her name and by Shem McCoy, 40, of North Amityville, a family friend. Wilson was a North Amityville native who had moved to Missouri and was on a vacation visiting his family, the cousin said.

"He was happy to be back home" and went to the lodge with his brothers for a fun night out, she said.

Hollywood Lodge No. 92, at the corner of Coolidge and Rosewood avenues, is often used as a party venue and has been the site of brawls and shootings in the past, according to neighbors and public records.

Officers had rushed to the building early Saturday after receiving 911 calls and a ShotSpotter notification. When they arrived, "a large fight" involving five men was breaking up outside, and officers found the three men with gunshot wounds and a fourth victim with minor injuries, said Det. Lt. Kevin Beyrer, head of Suffolk's homicide squad.

"We're trying to sort out exactly what happened and exactly what each person's involvement was," Beyrer said.

Bobby Benloss, second assistant chief of the North Amityville Fire Department, said he was asleep in his home three houses from the lodge when his fire pager went off about 2 a.m., informing him of the shooting.

"When I pulled up, four males were in the middle of the street, lying on the pavement," Benloss said. "One was shot in the middle of his chest. He was yelling, 'Help! Help me please! Where's the ambulance?' The other two were shot in the leg."

He added: "I just tried to keep talking to the man with the chest wound, keep him conscious, asking him his name."

Carl Curry, who is senior pastor of the Full Gospel Worship Center in Copiague and lives across the street from the lodge, showed reporters four holes in the siding on the front of his house -- damage that he said had come from stray bullets fired in three separate shootings in the past several years.

"It's no holds barred," Curry said of gunplay on the block. "Like clockwork, once it gets hot out, this violence starts up."

In January 2004, a 31-year-old man from Amityville was shot and seriously wounded while standing outside the lodge. Another man, 27, of North Amityville, was fatally shot outside the property in August 2007, records show.

Messages left for several people listed on the lodge's website were not returned.

With Will James

and Robert Brodsky

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com,kevin.deutsch@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert,

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.