Authorities say Carey Gabay, 43, and his brother were walking near Bedford Avenue and Sullivan Place around 3:40am when they passed a group fighting and gunshots rang out.
Gabay was shot in the head by a stray bullet and rushed to the hospital in critical condition. He was just one of four men shot overnight along the parade route.
The West Indian Day Parade - also known as the J'Ouvert Festival - takes place every labor day in the Crown Heights neighborhood in the borough of Brooklyn.
It has a reputation for violence during the parties that are held overnight ahead of the parade. Just last year, three people were shot near the parade route, including one fatality.
'This was a beautiful man, a sweet man, a man who was giving back to his community, a gentleman, who was involved in nothing, just walking down the street with his brother, wife pregnant with his first child,' Gov Cuomo said of Gabay to ABC 7. 'He was the lawyer who rewrote the rent laws that protected so many tenants. I'm going to see him now. It's a reminder that the violence has to stop.'