Gunman on the run

Police are searching for a gunman they say shot and killed a man in Long Beach on Monday afternoon.

According to Nassau County homicide detectives, a man took out a gun, shot and killed Ernest Cummings, 46, of Long Beach near 19 East Hudson Street at about 3:34 p.m. on March 22.

When Long Beach Police officers arrived at the scene, they found Cummings lying in front of that location with a gunshot wound.

Police would give no further information and the investigation is ongoing.

“There is nothing I can give out right now,” Detective Sgt. Richard Laursen of Nassau County Homicide Squad told the Herald on Tuesday morning. “Once the autopsy is done, then I can give out some more information.”

An East Hudson resident, who declined to give his name, said that he knew both Cummings and the suspected gunman, who he identified to the Herald as a 19-year-old who lived in the neighborhood.

“I didn’t hear no arguing, but then I left in my car and I seen the kid [the suspected gunman] outside at his car before the shooting,” he said. “To my knowledge, the guy that got shot said that his [the gunman’s dogs] were weak or something like that,” he said. “The kid that shot him, he doesn’t have it all in his brain. He’s a little nuts.”

He said that he knew both men and that he's sometimes see them talking to one another. “I still can’t put together why he would shoot him over that,” he said. “ ... I can’t see the kid walking up to his house and shooting him in front of his house over dogs. It had to be something else.”

He often saw Cummings walking his pit bulls on a leash on their block, and said the suspected gunman let his dogs run around his yard and he put them in a cage. “He was like old G in the neighborhood,” he said about Cummings, “you go to talk to him for information or advice.”