A Christian pastor in Brooklyn was robbed at gunpoint during his live-streamed sermon on Sunday before bandits made off with $400,000 in jewelry.
The notorious robbery occurred at the Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries in Canarsie when three armed masked men stormed the podium as Bishop Lamor Whitehead delivered his sermon.
“How many of you have lost your faith because you saw somebody else die?” Whitehead asked his congregation just prior to the robbery.
As Lamor Whitehead realized he was being held at gunpoint, he immediately dropped to the ground. “All right, all right, all right,” he could be heard saying before the masked men walked up. Take a look:
According to the New York Post, police said the bandits took “$400,000 worth of jewelry from Whitehead, his wife and possibly churchgoers.”
“Whitehead, dressed in a maroon suit with a gold-trimmed collar and sleeve cuffs, was wearing a long gold chain and a large ring on each finger at the time,” noted the outlet. “The robbers fled East on Avenue D after the crime.”
Crime has been steadily rising in New York City despite Mayor Eric Adam’s proposed tough-on-crime platform. This past April, the city saw a 36.5 percent rise in crime while the state’s bail reform laws have come under scrutiny. Per Breitbart News:
Overall index crime in New York City jumped a staggering 36.5 percent last month compared to March of 2021 as the state’s soft on crime bail laws begin to shape the 2022 gubernatorial race.
There were 1267 robberies city-wide in March, which is a 48.4 percent leap from the 854 robberies in March of 2021, while the city tallied 1044 grand larcenies auto, a 59.4 percent climb from last year, the New York City Police Department’s (NYPD) crime statistics show.
Whitehead responded to the robbery in an Instagram video on Sunday in which he thanked people for their prayers.
“If you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you should be upset,” he said. “Because they came into the house of the Lord where we worship and they violated it.”