On a November night in 2013, the life of Ali Eskandarian, a 35-year-old Iranian-American musician and writer, was brought to a violent and tragic end in his Brooklyn, New York residence. Just after midnight on November 11th, a disgruntled fellow musician climbed onto the roof of the East Williamsburg building where Eskandarian lived, carrying a. 308 caliber rifle.
From the rooftop, the gunman descended to a third-floor terrace and opened fire through a window, striking Eskandarian in the head.
The gunman, identified as 29-year-old Ali Akbar Mohammadi Rafie, then continued his rampage through the three-story building. He proceeded to shoot and kill two other residents, brothers Arash Farazmand, 28, and Soroush Farazmand, 27. The brothers were members of the indie rock band The Yellow Dogs, a group that, like Eskandarian, had emigrated from Iran to pursue artistic freedom in the United States. Eskandarian was a friend and collaborator of the band. A fourth man, Sasan Sadeghpourosko, was shot in the arm but managed to survive the attack.
The motive for the horrific act stemmed from a personal conflict. The shooter, Rafie, was a musician in another Iranian band called the Free Keys. He had been kicked out of his own band the previous year and had become estranged from the community of Iranian artists in Brooklyn. Following the deadly assault inside the house, Ali Akbar Mohammadi Rafie returned to the roof of the building and took his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The incident was ruled a triple murder-suicide, and as the perpetrator was deceased, no arrests were made in connection with the killings of Ali Eskandarian and the Farazmand brothers.
