NEW YORK — A laid-off women’s
accessories designer shot a former coworker to death in front of the
Empire State Building, causing a chaotic showdown with police Friday in
front of one of the world’s best-known landmarks. Police killed the
suspect and at least nine others were wounded, some possibly by police
gunfire, city officials said.
Some of the wounded were grazed by bullets and others hit directly, but all were expected to survive, officials said.
The gunshots rang out on the Fifth
Avenue side of the building at around 9 a.m., a time of day when the
sidewalks around the building are packed with pedestrians and merchants
were opening their shops.
“People were yelling ‘Get down! Get
down!”, said Marc Engel, an accountant who was on a bus in the area when
he heard the shots. “It took about 15 seconds, a lot of ‘pop, pop, pop,
pop, one shot after the other.”
Afterward, he saw the sidewalks littered with the wounded, including one person “dripping enough blood to leave a stream.”
After the shootout, crowds of tourists
and people on their way to work gathered along 34th Street, which was
shut down by police. Police helicopters buzzed overhead and swarms of
officers were gathered around the crime scene.
Jeffrey Johnson, 58, was laid off about
a year ago at Hazan Imports and fired three times at the company’s
41-year-old office manager, shooting the man in the head, Police
Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. The two had traded accusations of
harassment when Johnson worked there, he said.
Johnson walked away, and a construction
worker who saw the shooting followed Johnson and alerted police,
officials said. Surveillance video footage shows Johnson reaching into a
bag, pulling out a .45-caliber pistol and pointing it at officers,
Kelly said. The officers drew their weapons and started firing, killing
Johnson, Kelly said.
Kelly initially said that Johnson fired
on officers, but police said later they were trying to determine
whether Johnson actually fired shots.
The two officers fired a total of 14
rounds, he said. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said some of the nine wounded
may have been shot by police in the mayhem. Johnson’s semi-automatic
weapon was equipped to fire at least eight rounds; at least one round
was left in the clip, police said.
Johnson worked at the company near the building for about six years and was laid off because of downsizing, Kelly said.
“We were just working here and we just
heard bang, bang, bang!” said Mohammed Bachchu, 22, of Queens, a worker
at a nearby souvenir shop. He said he rushed from the building and saw
seven people lying on the ground, covered in blood.
Queens resident Rebecca Fox, 27, said
she saw people running down the street and initially thought it was a
celebrity sighting, but then saw a woman shot in the foot and a man dead
on the ground.
“I was scared and shocked and literally
shaking,” she said. She said police seemed to appear in seconds. “It
was like CSI, but it was real.”
Hassam Cissa, 22, of the Bronx, said he saw two bodies on the ground and police applying a white cloth to a man’s stomach wound.
Gunshots so close to one of the city’s
leading tourist attractions immediately prompted fears of terrorism, but
federal officials said that wasn’t the case, and a guard at skyscraper
said it didn’t involve the parts of the building where tourists gather
to visit the skyscraper.
The gunfire came less than two weeks
after a knife-wielding man was shot dead by police near Times Square,
another tourist-saturated part of the city. Authorities say police shot
51-year-old Darrius Kennedy after he lunged at officers with a kitchen
knife Aug. 12. Kennedy was smoking marijuana in Times Square on a
Saturday afternoon when officers first approached, police said. It was
the beginning of an encounter that would stretch for seven crowded
blocks.
In 1997, a gunman opened fire on the
86th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building, killing one
tourist and wounding six others before fatally shooting himself.
