A 39-year-old woman is dead and a 27-year-old man is in critical condition after gunfire erupted inside a house on Garth Court near Corona Avenue in Staten Island's Richmond neighborhood Thursday morning. Police recovered a gun at the scene, but investigators had not determined whether a shooter fled or whether the wounded man shot himself after shooting the woman.
Emergency crews from the NYPD and FDNY were dispatched to the residential cul-de-sac at roughly 11:11 a.m., where they found the woman with a gunshot wound and the man also wounded, according to the New York Daily News. Accounts of the injuries have varied slightly across outlets: the Daily News reported both victims were found shot in the chest, while the Staten Island Advance reported the woman suffered a torso wound and the man was shot in the head. Medics transported both victims to Staten Island University Hospital North, where the woman later died and the man remained in critical condition.
Local emergency news reports identified the woman as Dana Foley and the man as Dakota Suckstorff, according to UNF News, though the NYPD had not formally released the victims' identities as of Thursday, a delay consistent with routine next-of-kin notification procedures. Police were still investigating what led to the shooting and had not clarified the relationship between the two victims.
Trauma Center Response
The pair were rushed to Staten Island University Hospital's North Campus in Ocean Breeze, an American College of Surgeons-verified Level I Adult Trauma Center with a 24-hour emergency department, according to Northwell Health. The facility on Seaview Avenue is one of the borough's primary trauma centers equipped to handle the most severe gunshot injuries.
The shooting falls within the jurisdiction of the NYPD's 122nd Precinct, which patrols Staten Island's East and South shores, including Richmond, Midland Beach, New Dorp, Todt Hill and Great Kills, per the NYPD. The precinct's stationhouse sits at 2320 Hylan Boulevard, and detectives there are leading the investigation into what police have so far described only as a reported triple-shooting on Garth Court.
A Rare Act of Violence for the Borough
The Garth Court shooting is a jarring exception in a borough that has posted the lowest gun violence rate of New York City's five boroughs. Staten Island had recorded zero homicides and just four shooting incidents through early April, according to Hoodline's prior reporting on the borough's crime statistics.
That relative safety comes even as local elected officials warned this month that NYPD staffing on Staten Island has fallen 16% over the past five years, to roughly 630 active officers — fewer than patrolled the borough in 1968, despite the population nearly doubling to about 495,000 residents, per a New York Post report. Borough leaders have repeatedly pressed for more patrol officers amid those staffing concerns.
Domestic Firearm Violence Under Scrutiny
Investigators have not confirmed a motive, but the pattern of a single recovered firearm alongside a fatal torso wound and a critical head wound aligns with cases regularly evaluated by police as potential domestic murder-suicide attempts. A 2025 Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health study found that intimate partners account for 57% of all homicide victims in murder-suicide incidents nationwide, with firearms involved in nearly 90% of cases.
Under New York law, courts can issue Temporary Orders of Protection or Extreme Risk Protection Orders — the state's Red Flag Law — mandating the immediate surrender of firearms from individuals found to pose a risk to intimate partners or themselves, according to legal analysis from Offit Kurman. It remains unclear whether either Garth Court victim had any prior contact with the court system on that front.
Thursday's shooting also echoes an earlier Staten Island shooting in April, when a 20-year-old woman was shot in the throat outside the Staten Island Mall Target by her boyfriend, who then fled on a motorcycle. That victim survived after treatment at SIUH North, underscoring how domestic firearm violence continues to surface even in a borough with comparatively low overall crime.
The NYPD has not announced any charges or a determined cause in the Garth Court case, and police say they are continuing to investigate whether a shooter fled the scene or whether the man's injuries were self-inflicted after the woman was shot.
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