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Gunman Opens Fire Outside Empire State Building

Subrina Hudson |
August 24, 2012 | 9:10 a.m. PDT

Executive Producer

Photo of the Empire State Building taken from 5th Avenue and 33rd Street, near the location of the shooting. (Brent Rostad/Flickr)
Photo of the Empire State Building taken from 5th Avenue and 33rd Street, near the location of the shooting. (Brent Rostad/Flickr)
A gunman opened fire outside the Empire State Building killing at least one person and injuring eight others on Friday after being recently fired from his workplace. The gunman was shot and killed by two New York police officers, according to CBS News.

The man entered his former workplace and shot his boss in the face, killing him, and opened fire on others in the area. A law enforcement source told CBS News that the man was fired from his job on Thursday and returned to his workplace on Friday to receive money he was owed.

"I was sitting outside, and I heard three shots first and I saw three people running up to Park Avenue way from the Empire State Building," one woman told CBS News. "Then we heard it again and it was like 10 to 15 shots at one time. Then we saw the whole block, like over 50 people running to Park Avenue."

The shooting happened around 9 a.m. on Fifth Avenue outside the Midtown Manhattan building, reports The Chicago Tribune. Several people were treated outside the building and the more seriously wounded were taken to Bellevue Hospital and others to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, according to The New York Times.

The Chicago Tribune:

Mail courier James Bolden, 31, said he saw a "guy laying on the (sidewalk), bleeding from the neck and barely breathing."

"Everybody was crowded around him taking pictures and video, and security guys were yelling everybody to get back, and give him space. He was barely breathing," Bolden said.

One witness said she saw a woman who was shot in the foot and another woman being taken away in an ambulance.

"I was walking down 33rd (Street) and there's a dead guy. I just saw pools of blood. He was laying down and [there] was blood pooling (around him)," Justin Kellis, 35, who works nearby.

President Obama was informed of the shooting by national security adviser John Brennan at 9:30 a.m., and a White House official told The Hill that the president would continue to receive updates throughout the day.

The Empire State Building is home to over 200 tenants like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Boy Scouts of America and the cosmetics manufacturer Coty. The building remained open, as did the terrace on the 86th floor and the Observatory on the 102nd. However, The New York Times reported that “reaching the building became all but impossible after the police blocked off nearby streets.”

CNN:

Local and federal authorities who converged on the building around 9 a.m. closed several streets around 5th Avenue and 34th Street, snarling traffic in the heart of Manhattan.

The Empire State Building is one of the most famous skyscrapers in the world and one of New York City's best-known tourist attractions.

Each year, about 4 million people visit the building's two observation decks. At more than 1,453 feet tall, the landmark building reaches more than a quarter-mile into the sky.

The area typically has a large security presence.

"There's always a focus and concentration on the building," said retired police officer Lou Palumbo. "That building gets special attention."

According to The Chicago Tribune, the incident outside the Empire State Building is the second high-profile shooting incident in two weeks in New York’s tourist-heavy midtown Manhattan. “On August 12 New York City police shot and killed a knife-wielding suspect as he sought to evade them through Saturday afternoon traffic and pedestrians in Times Square,” reports The Chicago Tribune.

The Empire State shooting is the third mass shooting case this summer. On July 20, a gunman opened fire during a midnight screening of the Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises” in Aurora, Colorado killing 12 people and wounding 58. On August 5, a gunman with ties to white supremacists killed six people and critically wounded three at a Sikh temple outside Milwaukee before police shot him dead.

Reach Executive Producer Subrina Hudson here; follow her on Twitter here.



 

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