On Thursday, Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa talked about the death of 69-year-old Robin Wright at the 110th Street subway station, while former Governor Andrew Cuomo spoke to residents in Harlem.
It happened at East 110th Street and Madison Avenue just before 12:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Sliwa said he is demanding "urgent action to protect seniors and restore safety citywide."
"I heard again from the mayor yesterday we're the safest we've ever been in the history of New York, that's absolute nonsense," Sliwa said.
For his part, Cuomo doubled down on his plan to hire 5,000 NYPD officers to backfill historic attrition rates in the department.
"Twelve years of mismanagement in City Hall have left the NYPD rank and file defunded, demoralized and resigning in droves, all to the detriment of public safety," Cuomo said. "Yesterday, a poor woman minding her own business, crossing the street with her walker, tragically lost her life. This is completely unacceptable. We need to make investments now to reverse years of damage caused by 'defund-the-police' policies and to give New Yorkers the motivated and fully-staffed police department they deserve.
Mayor Eric Adams responded to Cuomo's comments during a news conference on Thursday.
"I find it despicable to hold up the life of a grandmother and use it as a campaign prop, particularly when the laws that you passed put in place the over proliferation of this violence on our streets," he said. "We have been clear on ending violence in our city."
The NYPD is searching for three men after Wright was shot while using her walker and standing on the sidewalk next to her friend, Juanita Arnold.
"We were just coming from the Chinese restaurant, innocently, we didn't expect for any of this to happen," Arnold said.
Surveillance video shows Wright pushing her blue walker about a block or so from her apartment. Minutes later, that same blue walker would be left behind on the sidewalk next to bloody rubber gloves and yellow tape.
Arnold said the bullet came out of nowhere from a distance and there was no sign of any dispute or altercation at the time.
Police say a man who had just been mugged by two other men chased after them and started shooting.
Eyewitness News has screened surveillance video of the gun battle that left nearly two dozen shell casings behind. There was a man in a black hoodie wearing a face mask, seen firing off a rapid succession of shots from a handgun so fast that it looked like the white flashes of a high-speed shutter camera.
One of those bullets struck Wright, who never saw it coming.
Eyewitness News spoke exclusively on the phone with Wright's brother.
"My sister had a lot of grandkids, but she only had two kids - a son and a daughter," said the victim's brother, Glen Williams.
"My sister was a loving person. Got along with everybody, and she's a loving person," Williams said.
At Lehman Village Houses, where Wright was well known and much beloved by her neighbors, there were more flowers, candles and handwritten tributes to honor her memory.
Police are still searching for all three men involved in the mugging and shooting.
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