A Brooklyn bishop was delivering his Sunday sermon when thieves robbed him and his wife at gunpoint, making off with more than $1 million worth of jewelry, police said.
Three armed, masked individuals dressed in black robbed Lamor Whitehead, the pastor of Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries, as he livestreamed his service from the Canarsie church around 11 a.m. on Sunday.
Whitehead recounted the harrowing experience in an Instagram post describing how he was on the ground with a gun pointed at him when the thieves took his watch, multiple chains, wedding band, and bishop’s cross.
“I didn’t know if they wanted to shoot the church up, or if they were just coming for a robbery,” he said in the post.
The thieves also stole jewelry from Whitehead’s wife. No one was injured in the attack, police told the New York Times.
The thieves fled on foot. Whitehead said he followed the robbers out of the church and watched as they got into a white Mercedes-Benz. No arrests have been made.
Whitehead said the robbery traumatized parishioners, including young children who were in attendance. He accused the suspects of putting a gun in his eight-month-old daughter’s face.
“You did this to the church, the church where I’m sure your grandmother praises God and Jesus,” he said. “There’s no reason for you to come inside a church and violate it.”
Critics have called Whitehead “flashy” since he was thrust into the spotlight for his role in mediating the surrender of Andrew Abdullah, a 25-year-old man with a lengthy rap sheet who has been charged in connection with the unprovoked fatal shooting of a man on the New York City subway in May. Whitehead, who said he was connected to Abdullah’s family through his church, was wearing a Fendi suit jacket as he was seen exiting a Rolls-Royce at a legal-aid office at the time.
Whitehead dismissed the criticisms on Sunday, saying, “It’s about me purchasing what I want to purchase. It’s my prerogative to purchase what I want to purchase if I worked hard for it.”
New York City mayor Eric Adams spoke out against the robbery on Monday and vowed to bring the three criminals to justice.
“No one in this city should be the victim of armed robbery, let alone our faith leaders and congregants worshiping in a House of God,” Adams said, according to the New York Daily News. The paper reported that Adams and Whitehead are longtime friends.
“The NYPD is investigating this crime and will work tirelessly to bring the criminals involved to justice,” Adams said.
Whitehead suggested in his Instagram post that he may know the suspects: “We know more than y’all think we know.”
Whitehead is offering a $50,000 cash reward for information leading to the arrests of the robbers, he said in a Facebook livestream on Monday.