A top aide to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was shot in the head and critically injured by a stray bullet during violence that erupted today before the West Indian Day parade in Brooklyn.

Carey Gabay, 43, the first deputy counsel at New York’s chief economic development agency, was struck by gunfire and is in critical condition.

“This tragic shooting – this one by another seemingly random bullet – is the latest heartbreaking reminder that the crime of gun violence must stop,” said Governor Cuomo, who oversaw passage of the state’s sweeping gun control laws.

Ring of Fire is going to continue to report these stories of inexplicable gun violence in the United States until serious gun control laws are passed on a national level.

For more on this story, click the Huffington Post story Andrew Cuomo Aide Shot In Head Before Brooklyn Parade.

K.J. McElrath is a former history and social studies teacher who has long maintained a keen interest in legal and social issues. In addition to writing for The Ring of Fire, he is the author of two published novels: Tamanous Cooley, a darkly comic environmental twist on Dante's Inferno, and The Missionary's Wife, a story of the conflict between human nature and fundamentalist religious dogma. When not engaged in journalistic or literary pursuits, K.J. works as an entertainer and film composer.