Alfredo Vallinas was getting ready to celebrate his 15th wedding anniversary with his wife Gudelia, but instead he’s mourning her, after the 37-year-old mother of two was shot dead at the Woodside Houses. 

“They did not only kill a wife and a mother and a friend, they also killed me, too," he said.

What You Need To Know

  • After yet another shooting at the Woodside Houses in Queens, community leaders are speaking out

  • Local officials joined residents to ask for Congress to pass gun control legislation

  • They're also calling on the city to do more preventative work

Police believe Gudelia Vallinas was not the intended target of the March 12 shooting. They said she was caught in the crossfire of an argument between two men. No one, though, has been arrested.

Her death is now a symbol to the Woodside community of the need to deal with the plague of gun violence, which has increased over the last year.

“The pain will never go away, I will have to live that forever," Alfredo Vallinas said. "And I do not wish this on anybody. Today it was my family, it was the Vallinas family, it was Gudelia, but tomorrow it could be yours." 

And indeed, on Wednesday night at the Woodside Houses, a 32-year-old man was shot in the back, but he’s expected to recover.

On Thursday morning, Vallinas, joined with local leaders, called on Congress to act on comprehensive gun reform.

“Let’s start there and making sure stop guns from coming into our city and into our communities,” said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards.

Congress has been unable to pass new gun laws, but the speakers also are urging the city to use stimulus funding to address systemic issues in underserved neighborhoods that have led young people to participate in gang violence.

“The idle mind is the devils workshop, and I think that we have to pause and face the facts. Until we start somewhere developing programming that is systemic and equitable for our young people so they don’t grow up into what we see happening," said Bishop Mitchell Taylor, the CEO of Urban Upbound, an advocacy and support organization.

Mayor Bill de Blasio did recently announce the expansion of Cure Violence programs to several additional police precincts. The programs deploy  "violence interrupters,” who work to defuse conflicts, but the expansion does not include this community in western Queens.