I am not a paparazzo, nothing against those guys, have friends who are, but what attracted me to this story was to be able to document the next stage of gentrification on this street. I have documented Ludlow for more than 2 decades. I have numerous photos of the drug dealers who used to control this block, crews like Hell Raiser. One especially poignant memory is of Tony a hit seller.
Tony was shot. No ambulance came. No cops arrived. I hooked up with a local Dominican limousine and we raced him to the Bellevue emergency . Was amazing because different than on TV, the only evidence you could see of his wound was an end of your pinky sized burn mark on his sweater. No blood splattered everywhere, all the blood was flowing to all the wrong places inside his body- it was a serious internal injury. Once we got to the hospital the drive took off. I went inside. With the help of a nurse we throw him on a gurney and they rushed him into an operating room. I got off one shot of the medical staff cutting off his clothes- then a doctor went nuts and threw my ass out of there. I walked home. Feeling lucky to be alive.
Tony survived- Ludlow did not.
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