MONSEY — Raymond Mundy, the longtime president of the Hudson Valley Humane Society, was killed Tuesday when the roof of a shed he was renovating collapsed on top of him.
Mundy, 68, had been seen by neighbors working on the building, which sat adjacent to his large, white home on Route 306 in the unincorporated section of Ramapo. The road was closed for several hours for an investigation.
Ann Marie Gaudio, executive vice president of the Hudson Valley Humane Society, knew Mundy for more than a dozen years.
"Everyone who knew Ray is devastated," Gaudio said. "We lost a superior human being.
We lost someone who really believed in empathy — empathy for animals, empathy for people. The man had a heart of gold."
Mundy had called his wife, Judy, on Tuesday afternoon to tell her he was going out to work on the shed. She found Mundy pinned under the collapsed building when she returned from work later in the day.
Several neighbors expressed sadness about Mundy's death, with one recalling how Mundy had helped turn on electricity for him after the Jewish Sabbath began. Another neighbor, Zishe Miller, said Mundy had happily let others place lights along a path that passed through his property and served as a shortcut connecting neighborhoods.
"He was the nicest guy," Miller said.
David Moscowitz, a neighbor of Mundy's for 10 years, said that he saw Mundy working on the shed and that about 90 minutes before police arrived, he had walked by the home and seen the collapsed roof; he had no idea Mundy had been caught underneath.
"He was a good neighbor," Moscowitz said.
Mundy had managed to remove the wallboard from the shed, leaving only the frame and the roof standing prior to the accident, Moscowitz and other neighbors said.
Ramapo police, the county Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the county Medical Examiner's Office and the Ramapo Building Department responded.
Mundy was pronounced dead at the scene by Rockland Paramedics, police said.
Volunteers from Hillcrest Fire Department assisted with extricating Mundy from the debris.
Police said an investigation was continuing.
Gaudio said Mundy had served as the Humane Society's president for more than 20 years.
He was a licensed state peace officer who had a badge and a gun as he investigated animal-cruelty cases.
His prevention efforts were not limited to dogs and cats. In the late 1990s, Mundy and the Humane Society worked to find alternatives to a plan to kill Canada geese that had become a nuisance in local parks.
In 2008, he found himself in the spotlight, as he sometimes did over the years, when he came to the defense of a Wesley Hills woman who had 23 dogs removed from her home, the animals found in cages thickened by feces.
Mundy grew up in Virginia and graduated from the University of Virginia Law School, Gaudio said. He was recruited by a New York City law firm affiliated with former President Richard Nixon and lived on Manhattan's East Side before moving to Rockland with his wife. He also was involved with the Republican Party in Ramapo — and perhaps, given the current political mood, was ahead of his time: In 1991, he worked to get a referendum on a proposal to cap the town's tax increases at 2.5 percent, or at the rate of inflation, up to 5 percent.
The measure never made it to voters, after then-state Supreme Court Justice Robert Stolarik found that there was no provision in state election law for adding such proposals to the ballot.
Mundy previously served as a Rockland County assistant county attorney, and Gaudio said that until his death, Mundy was an adjunct professor at Rockland Community College, where he taught classes in philosophy and business ethics.
Gaudio credited Mundy with helping the Humane Society relocate from older, inadequate quarters on McNamara Road in Ramapo a few years ago to the five-acre site the organization now owns in Pomona.
The site eventually will be home to new adoption centers. A kennel on the grounds is being used temporarily to house some animals awaiting adoption. A veterinarian leased land and built a new animal hospital, providing the Humane Society with an income for its operations.
Ray Mundy is responsible for the future of the Humane Society, and his dreams and his goals will be fulfilled ," Gaudio said. "He will continue to guide us from another level."
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