New York, Jul 25 – A preacher from Brooklyn (southern New York) known for his ostentatious style and flashy jewelry was robbed yesterday Sunday while he was delivering the weekly sermon, and the thieves stripped him of his jewelry and of his wife worth a million dollars, according to the police.
Pastor Lamor Miller-Whitehead, who calls himself “bishop”, was in the middle of the sermon before a score of parishioners when three men entered the temple and, after threatening him with firearms, took several rings and chains that he was wearing, before doing the same with his wife.
The pastor himself told it in a video he posted on Instagram: “When I saw them arrive at the sanctuary with their guns, I told everyone to get down, everyone to the ground. I didn’t know if they wanted to shoot the church or if they came just to steal,” he said.
Once the robbery was over, Whitehead spoke today with the WBCS network, and told him: “They knew (what they were doing), they observed me and they knew that I had other jewelry,” he said, explaining how the thieves searched thoroughly under his clothes.
After the robbery, the thieves fled on foot and got into a Mercedes Benz that was waiting for them.
The pastor, a personal friend of Mayor Eric Adams, used the Instagram video to defend himself against comments explaining the robbery because of his penchant for luxury.
“It’s not about being flashy, it’s about buying what I want to buy. It’s my right to buy what I want. I’ve worked hard for it (so) I can buy what I want,” he said.
The controversial pastor previously served five years in prison for identity theft and theft, before founding his Church of Tomorrow’s Leaders in the Brooklyn neighborhood.