2 killed, 9 wounded outside Empire State Building

COLLEEN LONG,Associated Press

TOM HAYS,Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A women’s acces­sories designer fatally shot a vice pres­i­dent from his for­mer com­pany out­side the Empire State Build­ing on Fri­day, 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 by stray police gun­fire, author­i­ties said.

The gun­shots rang out on the Fifth Avenue side of the build­ing at around 9 a.m., when pedes­tri­ans on their way to work packed side­walks 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.”

Wear­ing a suit and tie and car­ry­ing a brief­case, Jef­frey John­son word­lessly walked up to the vice pres­i­dent, iden­ti­fied by offi­cials as Steven Ercol­ino, put a gun to his head and fired three times, accord­ing to author­i­ties and witnesses.

“Jef­frey just came from behind two cars, pulled out his gun, put it up to Steve’s head and shot him,” said Carol Timan, whose daugh­ter, Irene, was walk­ing to Hazan Imports at the time with Ercolino.

John­son, 58, had traded accu­sa­tions of harass­ment when John­son worked there, Police Com­mis­sioner Ray­mond Kelly said; law enforce­ment offi­cials said that John­son had been angry that Ercol­ino wasn’t pro­mot­ing his products.

A con­struc­tion worker who saw the shoot­ing fol­lowed John­son and alerted two police offi­cers, a detail reg­u­larly assigned to patrol city land­marks like the 1,454-foot sky­scraper since the 9/11 ter­ror attacks, offi­cials said.

There were con­flict­ing accounts about whether John­son fired at the police offi­cers or just pointed the gun at them.

Kelly ini­tially said the offi­cers were fired upon, but later said police were inves­ti­gat­ing. John­son can be seen on video reach­ing into a bag, pulling out a .45-caliber pis­tol and point­ing it at offi­cers, Kelly said.

The offi­cers drew their weapons and fired 14 rounds, killing John­son, Kelly said.

“These offi­cers … had absolutely no choice,” Kelly said. “This indi­vid­ual took a gun out very close to them and per­haps fired at them.”

Kelly said police may be respon­si­ble for some of the injuries because of the lim­ited capac­ity of the gunman’s weapon. Johnson’s semi-automatic weapon was equipped to fire at least eight rounds; at least one round was left in the clip, police said. Another loaded mag­a­zine was in his briefcase.

Robert Asika, who was shot in the right arm, said he was “100 per­cent pos­i­tive” that a police offi­cer had shot him. He also said he saw John­son fire his gun at the officers.

Asika, 23, sells tick­ets for the Empire State Building’s observatory.

“When I woke up this morn­ing, I didn’t even want to go to work,” he said. “Some­thing told me not to go to work.”

The wounded vic­tims included five women and four men, aged 20 to 56, author­i­ties said.

Ercolino’s pro­file on the busi­ness net­work­ing site Linkedin iden­ti­fied him as a vice pres­i­dent of sales at Hazan Import Corp. It said he was a grad­u­ate of the State Uni­ver­sity of New York at Oneonta.

A man who answered the phone at Ercolino’s home in War­wick, north­west of Man­hat­tan, said he was too dis­traught to talk.

“He was a good son, that’s all I can say,” said the man, who didn’t give his name.

Hazan Import Corp., imports women’s cloth­ing and acces­sories, accord­ing to pub­lic records. The busi­ness was incor­po­rated in 1975 and lists Ralph Hazan, 61, Leon Hazan,35, and Isaac Hazan. 92, as pres­i­dents. Calls to the exec­u­tives weren’t imme­di­ately returned

John­son worked at the com­pany near the build­ing for about six years and was laid off because of down­siz­ing, Kelly said.

Even after he was laid off, John­son would leave left his Upper East Side apart­ment build­ing each morn­ing in a suit, and often returned about a half hour later after going to get break­fast at McDonald’s, his neigh­bors said.

“He was always alone,” said Gisela Casella, who lived a few floors above him. “I always felt bad. I said ‘Doesn’t he have a girl­friend?’ I never saw him with anybody.”

His super­in­ten­dent, Guillermo Suarez, said he lived alone in a one-bedroom apart­ment that he was sub­let­ting from some­one else. He called him a “very like­able guy,” who always wore a suit.

At the scene, New York­ers took to Twit­ter and the photo-sharing ser­vice Insta­gram to post pho­tos from the bloody side­walk, just as they had less than two weeks ago when police shot a knife-wielding man on a Sat­ur­day night in Times Square. One office worker took an over­head shot of a pool of blood out­side the Empire State Building.

“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.

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.

Metal detec­tors and bag searchers have been stan­dard at the 102-story sky­scraper since the 1997 shooting.

Mil­lions of tourists vis­it­ing New York ascend its heights to gape over the city from its obser­va­tion deck, made famous in films such as “Sleep­less in Seat­tle.” It was 1933’s “King Kong” that showed a giant ape clutch­ing Fay Wray and fend­ing off air­planes atop the tower.

The sky­scraper and its obser­va­to­ries remained open through­out the may­hem Fri­day, the building’s owner said.

“This unfor­tu­nate event had noth­ing to do with the Empire State Build­ing and with ter­ror­ism,” said Anthony Malkin of Malkin Holdings.

___

Con­tribut­ing to this report from New York were Alex Katz, Saman­tha Gross, Julie Walker, David B. Caruso, Adam Geller, Karen Matthews, Ula Ilnytzky and Anne D’Innocenzio.

Posted by AP News on Aug 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.