On the evening of December 6, 1988, Richard Jensen, a White man in his 30s, was at home on Lincoln Street in Riverhead with his young daughter nearby when a shotgun blast tore through the front window. Buckshot struck Jensen’s head and severed the middle fingers on both hands; his posture with hands clasped behind his head absorbed enough of the shot to prevent a fatal outcome. Jensen recovered in hospital and denied claims that he had refused to cooperate with investigators.

The shooting came amid a four-night burst of violence that included the fatal gunning of Bernard Timothy Heaney outside his Flanders auto-body shop. Authorities built a multi-agency task force as residents endured weeks of fear. Investigators ultimately accused and arrested Yusef Abdullah Rahman; a jury in October 1990 convicted him of depraved-indifference murder in Heaney’s death and of attempted murder and first-degree assault for the attacks that wounded Jensen and two other men.

Did anyone in Riverhead at the time have memories of that winter or information about Jensen’s recovery and the neighborhood’s response?