New York (AFP) – At least four people, including a police officer, were killed Monday after a gunman walked into a skyscraper in central Manhattan and opened fire in broad daylight, officials said. A fifth victim was also in critical condition after being shot, while the gunman apparently took his own life, Mayor Eric Adams told a late-night briefing at a hospital near the scene of the shooting.
The gunman was caught on surveillance footage leaving a black BMW carrying an M-4 rifle before entering the building and immediately opening fire on a police officer before “spraying the lobby” with bullets, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told a press conference. An office tower block at 345 Park Avenue — home to hedge fund giant Blackstone, auditor KPMG, and the National Football League — was apparently targeted by the gunman, Tisch said. She added that the suspect was believed to have acted alone.
Tisch identified the shooter as Shane Tamura from Las Vegas and said a revolver, ammunition, and magazines were found in his vehicle. She noted that Tamura had a history of mental health issues. The incident began around 6:00 pm (2200 GMT) when reports of gunfire prompted hundreds of police to swarm a busy office district on the storied Park Avenue, an area popular with tourists and visiting businesspeople.
A worker from a nearby office building wept as she left the area after a local lockdown was lifted, while another described a gunman going floor to floor as staff prepared to leave for the day. “We lost four souls to another act of senseless violence,” Adams said, without counting the gunman who also died, apparently by a self-inflicted gunshot. He mentioned that the fallen police officer, an immigrant from Bangladesh who was 36 years old, was among the dead. Two other males and a female also died, while another man remained in critical condition, officials said, without giving any preliminary motive for the shootings.
Office worker Shad Sakib told AFP that he was packing his things to leave work when a public address announcement warned him and his colleagues to shelter in place. “Everyone was confused with like, ‘wait, what’s going on?’ And then someone finally realized that it’s online, that someone walked in with a machine gun,” said the witness, who wore a grey suit jacket. “He walked right into a building right next door. We saw the photo of him walking through the same area that I walked through to get lunch here. You would think it won’t happen to you, and then it does.”
Another witness, a woman who declined to give her name as she left the vicinity of the shooting, told AFP, “I was in the building. He went floor by floor,” while a second woman wept as she left the scene. There have been 254 mass shootings in the United States this year, including Monday’s incident in New York, according to the Gun Violence Archive — which defines a mass shooting as four or more people shot.
Police officers deployed a drone near Park Avenue at the height of the evening rush hour as dozens of officers swarmed the area, some carrying long guns and others wearing ballistic vests. Police repeatedly pushed back journalists and members of the public who gathered to see what was happening in the normally calm but busy area of Midtown Manhattan. The area is home to several five-star business hotels, as well as a number of corporate headquarters and financial and law firms.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she has been briefed on the shooting. The frontrunner in the race for mayor, Zohran Mamdani, wrote on X that he was “heartbroken to learn of the horrific shooting in midtown and I am holding the victims, their families, and the NYPD officer… in my thoughts.”
© 2024 AFP
