Car parade to honor West Hempstead's Stop & Shop victims

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Dozens of cars filled more than half of the parking lot at the National Wholesale Liquidators site in West Hempstead in preparation for a heartfelt car parade last Sunday.

Residents, accompanied by the West Hempstead Fire Department, the Nassau County Police Department, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union Local 338 members, among other groups, drove down Hempstead Turnpike to the Stop & Shop at Cherry Valley Avenue to remember Ray Wishropp, 49, the store’s manager who was killed on April 20.

At around 11:30 a.m., 31-year-old Gabriel DeWitt Wilson, of Hempstead, allegedly walked into the West Hempstead Stop & Shop with a .380 caliber pistol, and shot and killed him, while wounding two others. The car parade came days after Wishropp’s funeral on April 28. Wishropp was a father of seven children, including two daughters who attend Valley Stream South High School.

–Nakeem Grant