The two surviving members of the Iranian rock group, Yellow Dogs, poured their hearts out in a gripping statement that shed light on their relationship with the twisted gunman who slaughtered their fallen band mates.
Siavash Karampour and Koory Mirzeai were lucky to avoid the wrath of embittered and estranged former band mate Ali Akbar Mohammadi Rafie Sunday night, and said, “We’re still here, still breathing but with a gaping hole in our hearts,” the grieving musicians wrote.
“For now it’s impossible to even imagine a future without our friends, and no explanation can make sense or begin to justify what has happened to our lives. To say we are heartbroken does not come close.”
Rafie, 29, walked into the Yellow Dogs Maujer Street pad in WIlliamsburg with a guitar case packed with a .308-caliber rifle and more than 100 rounds of ammo to settle a year-long grudge, authorities said.
The former bassist executed drummer and guitarist Arash and Soroush Farazmand as well as occasional frontman and friend Ali Eskandarian before running up to the roof and blowing his brains out.
Neither Karampour or Mirzeai were home at the time of the massacre.
“These are the darkest hours of our lives, we are in shock, awe, blinded with rage and paralyzed with grief,” the statement read.
All three victims had bright futures on the horizon, according to their surviving friends, with Eskandarian having just finished his memoir and Arash Farazmand recently earning political asylum from Iran. Meanwhile, his brother Soroush was hard at work on new Yellow Dogs material.
“Everything we had hoped and worked for was finally coming true — the future was so incredibly bright,” the men wrote.
But the band member’s hopeful futures were snuffed out by the disgruntled Rafie, who had apparenly been stewing for about a year after he was thrown out of the Iranian artist’s creative community for what Karampour and Mirzeai called “personal and musical differences.”
But sources told The Post Rafie had stolen money and equipment from the others in the band before being kicked to the curb.
Having jammed with the Yellow Dogs and fellow Iranian rockers the Free Keys back in Iran, Rafie was allowed into the group after the Free Keys regular bassist failed to secure a visa and came to the U.S. in 2012. But the relationship turned sour quickly after moving to New York and Rafie was let go after only three shows.
Desperate, broke, and alone, Rafie returned to the building on Maujer Street to exact his revenge on his fledgling former bandmates.
But the two surviving members of the Yellow dogs have vowed to not let the tragedy deter them from doing what they love and promised to rebuild.
“We will not let this disgusting brutality define us or become our story, but instead respond by creating music more passionately and with more intensity than ever before, embracing the freedom that we all dreamed would one day be ours back in Iran and play to honor those who should be playing next to us.”