The man arrested last week in possession of the gun linked to a shooting in front of Rep. Lee Zeldin's Shirley home faced a judge on gun charges, but not for the shooting itself.
Noah Green was formally charged Monday in connection with the Oct. 9 drive-by shooting. The 18-year-old pleaded not guilty before a Suffolk County judge one week after he was arraigned and ordered held on $750,000 cash bail.
Two 17-year-old boys were wounded in the shooting. Zeldin, who faces Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul in Tuesday's election, was not at home when the shooting occurred but said his twin teenage daughters were in the kitchen doing homework and heard gunshots and screaming.
Prosecutors have said law enforcement was conducting surveillance Oct. 31 when they observed Green get into a stolen car. When cops tried to engage Green, the DA's office said, he tried to flee and then reached into his pants pocket. Police stopped him and recovered a loaded 9mm pistol.
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"[Green] denies he was reaching for a gun. Hopefully the cops were wearing body cams, we will find out what is true and what is not," the 18-year-old's attorney, Christopher Cassar, said.
Authorities matched that pistol to the Oct. 9 shooting, matched Green's fingerprints to prints on the gun's loaded magazine, and say the stolen car he was caught in appears to match a car involved in the earlier incident.
Green's mother did not speak to reporters as she left court Monday, instead referring media to the family's attorney.
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"You have a young man never convicted of any crime, he's not accused of any violence, he's not been charged with anything in connection with the shooting on Oct. 9," the attorney, Christopher Cassar, said.
Law enforcement sources previously said the shooting appeared to be unrelated to the gubernatorial candidate.
"The two individuals who were shot were laying down under my front porch and the bushes in front of our porch," Zeldin said in a statement at the time.
Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said the investigation is "far from over."
Green is expected back in court at the end of November.
