In July, a man attempted to attack Zeldin at a campaign event in upstate New York, jumping on stage and raising his arm toward the congressman while holding a keychain with two sharp points.
Two young men were shot outside the Long Island home of GOP gubernatorial candidate Rep. Lee Zeldin on Sunday while his twin teenage daughters were at home, he confirmed to The Post.
“My daughters Mikayla and Arianna were doing homework on the first floor,” said Zeldin, who was not at the house in Shirley at the time. “They heard the shots. Boom! They went upstairs and locked themselves in the bathroom.
“They’re freaked out,” the congressman said of his 16-year-old girls. “One of the bullets was found 30 feet from where my daughters were doing their homework.”
Detectives are investigating the drive-by shooting as gang-related and were still looking for the gunman or gunmen, according to a law enforcement source.
Zeldin, who has made rising crime one of his prime campaign issues, said in a Sunday night press conference he was infuriated by the shooting.
“I’m standing in front of crime scene tape in front of my own house,” he said while standing beside his family. “You can’t get me more outraged than I am right now.”
Sources said that while the shooting took place two doors down from Zeldin’s home — and a bullet hit the congressman’s fence — it had “nothing to do with’’ the candidate, who is running on a tough-on-crime platform.
“Just happens to be irony,” a source told The Post.
One of the two 17-year-old victims jumped over the congressman’s fence trying to avoid getting shot as the bullets flew, knocking over a “Zeldin for Governor” sign in the process, according to sources.
Sources said one of the victims was shot in the chest, while the other was grazed on the arm.
A high-ranking law enforcement source told The Post the teen victims are “known to the department” and have been “involved with car thefts.”
Investigators are looking into whether a Saturday night feud at a Suffolk County recording studio may be connected to Sunday’s shooting, the source said.
Zeldin said the victims were taken to Long Island Community Hospital.
He said his front porch, where he had been interviewed by The Post just a day prior, “is now part of the crime scene.
“The local police have cordoned off the area,” he said.
“It hits really close to home when it shows up on your front doorstep,” Zeldin said at the briefing outside his house.
A law enforcement source said there was blood all over the property.
“Crime is out of control,” Zeldin said in a statement. “Like so many New Yorkers, crime literally made its way to our front doorstep.
“There was blood in the rock right next to the porch,” Zeldin added. “One of the shooting victims was underneath the porch. The other was underneath bushes near the porch.”
Zeldin said he and his wife, Diana, had just left the house to attend a Columbus Day parade in the Morris Park neighborhood in the Bronx.
The twins called 911 from the home around 2:20 p.m. to report the mayhem, he said.
