Revealed: First picture of Empire State shooter as shocking video shows moment police gunned down killer in hail of bullets as hundreds fled in terror
- Jeffrey Johnson, 58, shot ex-boss Steven Ercolino, 41, three times outside former workplace near New York City skyscraper
- Reportedly fired by Ercolino two years ago
- He was wearing smart grey suit and carrying a briefcase
- Ran off but was chased by construction worker who alerted police
- When Johnson aimed his gun at police, officers shot him dead
- Nine injured in gunfire - some might have been hit by police bullets
- Three still remain in hospital
- Neighbour: Shooter was always alone and 'immaculately' dressed
- Neighbors recalled that Johnson was quiet and 'very lonely'
- Rush-hour ruckus took place in heart of New York City at the height of summer when area was swarming with tourists and workers
A picture has emerged of the man who shot his former boss to death in broad daylight near the Empire State Building and whose death at the hands of police was captured in shocking video footage.
Jeffrey Johnson, 58, can be seen in the graphic footage wearing a smart grey suit and carrying a briefcase as members of the public run for cover after he shot his 41-year-old ex-boss Steven Ercolino.
Suddenly, Johnson appears to be hit presumably by police gunfire and drops to his knees before falling flat on his face on the sidewalk outside the iconic skyscraper.
Scroll down for videos (Warning Extremely Graphic Footage)
Jeffrey Johnson, 59, who gunned down his former boss Steve Ercolino on a W. 33rd St. sidewalk in Manhattan, New York
Jeffrey Johnson lies subdued on the ground outside the Empire State Building in New York City while a police officer points his gun at him
Video footage taken by a bystander shows the moment directly after police had fired upon Jeffrey Johnson outside the Empire State Building in New York City
A still image taken from surveillance video shows gunman Jeffrey Johnson confronting police officers outside the Empire State Building in New York August 24, 2012
Following a volley of gunfire from the police who are visible in the frame standing near, Johnson falls to the ground fatally wounded
Police look on after shooting gunman Jeffrey Johnson near the Empire State Building in New York today
At around 9 a.mm. the disgruntled employee returned to his former workplace and fatally shot his ex-boss three times, sparking early-morning chaos and multiple other injuries near the Empire State Building this morning.
According to news reports, Johnson continued to shoot Ercolino as he lay on the floor.
However, Jeffrey Johnson, was scuppered in his plans to escape after a construction worker saw the killing, chased him down the street and alerted police, who shot the gunman dead.
In the rush-hour ruckus, nine passersby were injured. Two people - the gunman and his former boss - were killed.
The deadly dispute horrified tourists and workers swarming around 34th street and Fifth Avenue, a sight-seeing area that is experiencing its busiest few weeks of the year.
Victim: Gunman Jeffrey Johnson shot dead his ex-boss Steve Ercolino, pictured with a friend, outside his former workplace in New York City on Friday morning. Johnson was fired a year ago
Loss: Ercolino, pictured left with his nephew Matthew and right, was shot three times in the head at close range by Johnson. He was the vice president of clothing retailers, Hazan Imports
Johnson had visited clothing retailers Hazan Imports, where he had been an accessories designer for six years before he was fired as it downsized last year, at 9 a.m.
He was dressed in a smart grey suit and was carrying a briefcase, the New York Daily News reported.
After his former boss, identified as 41-year-old Steven Ercolino, came out into the street to talk with him, Johnson shot him three times in the head and ran from the scene with his .45 caliber handgun hidden in a bag under his arm.
But he was followed a block north by a construction worker who had witnessed the deadly shooting and alerted two police officers on duty outside the Empire State Building.
When the gunman pulled out his firearm and aimed at them, they shot him dead.
'He tried to shoot at the cops,' said New York Mayor Bloomberg
'We do not know if he got any shots off.'
Gunman: Police surround the lifeless body of Johnson, who was wearing a grey suit, after he was shot dead by police. His handgun and briefcase can also be seen. MailOnline has pixelated his grisly injuries
Murderer: The killing comes despite neighbours knowing Johnson, pictured, as 'the nicest guy'
Killed: A body, believed to belong to the victim, is covered by a white sheet in the street
Murdered: Ercolino's body is wheeled to a medical examiner's van after being killed outside his workplace
Swarm: People stand near a police line at the scene of the shooting outside the Empire State Building
'THE SAFEST BIG CITY IN AMERICA': GUN CRIME IN NEW YORK CITY
Mayor Bloomberg has often called New York the safest big city in America, citing a declining crime rate that had the city on pace for another record low number of homicides in 2012.
'The proof is in the numbers,' he said earlier this month. 'Take a look crime here is down 36 per cent from where it was in 2001. Since 2001, the NYPD had cut crime citywide by 32 percent and made this the safest big city in the nation.'
But this incident is the second high-profile shooting incident in two weeks in New York's tourist-heavy Midtown Manhattan.
On August 12, NYPD shot dead a man wielding a kitchen knife as he tried to run away through Saturday afternoon traffic and pedestrians in Times Square.
Bloomberg may have the city's interests in mind amid fears these latest gun crimes could have a knock-on effect with tourism - but the statistics aren't entirely honest.
One recent survey of law enforcement officers found that, in the last decade, over half the officers had observed the intentional misclassification of serious crimes as petty offenses, suggesting it would make the city appear safer.
During the gunfire, four people were shot and a total of nine people were injured. The seven men and two women were whisked away to nearby hospitals, where some are undergoing surgery.
In a press conference near the scene, Commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg said some of the nine people who were injured may have been hit or grazed by ricocheting police gunfire.
The two officers fired a total of 16 rounds, AP reported. 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 was struck at least seven times, of which police said some may have been exit wounds.
It is 'not likely' any of the victims will die, Commissioner Kelly said. None are children or elderly.
When asked if the construction worker was the hero, Mayor Bloomberg responded: 'He did what he should have done. When he saw something, he said something and then turned it over to the professionals.'
Kelly and Bloomberg added that it was too early to say if Johnson was legally permitted to be carrying a gun, but early reports did not indicate he had a criminal record.
The victim, Steven Ercolino, was vice president of sales at Hazan Imports and had worked with the company for nearly seven years, according to his LinkedIn page.
A man who answered the phone at the home of Ercolino's parents in the city's suburbs said: 'He was a good son.'
'He was an incredible family man, loved his family,' a woman who identified herself as Ercolino's sister-in-law, added to the Wall Street Journal.
He had a girlfriend, with whom he had just enjoyed a vacation to Mexico, family members said.
'He just loved life,' a bar manager at his regular spot, Foley's, told DNAinfo. 'He was a great guy. He'd talk about today's fashions and what he was wearing. If he wasn't talking clothes, he was talking about what he was doing that weekend.'
Ruckus: The 9 a.m. incident, which was confined to a block, shut down roads in the heart of the city
Chaos: Four people were shot by the gunman. Here police stand by a body covered by a sheet
Victim: A man lies on the ground outside the Empire State Building after being shot by a gunman shortly after 9 a.m. on Friday morning. Two people, including the gunman, died in the incident
Johnson's neighbours said they were stunned to hear he was the shooter.
Gisela Casella, 71, who lives in the same Upper East Side building as Johnson, said he always dressed in 'immaculate' suits and could often be heard vacuuming inside his apartment.
He was 'so quiet but the nicest guy', she said.
She added that he was always alone but had two cats. One died last year, she said, and he looked stricken when he told her the news.
Guillermo Suarez, the building's superintendent, added that Johnson was friendly but always on his own. 'This guy was very mellow,' he said. 'Very mellow and very lonely.'
Witnesses recounted the chaotic scene at a time when store workers were opening their shops and tourists were filtering into the area.
Investigation: An NYPD officer looks through the pants on a body that is lying on 5th Avenue
Concerns: Seven men and two women were rushed to hospital after sustaining shot wounds or grazing
Looking on: The shooting took place in the heart of the city, in an area teeming with tourists and workers
'People were yelling "Get down! Get down!", Marc Engel, an accountant on a nearby bus, said. 'It took about 15 seconds, a lot of "pop, pop, pop, pop", one shot after the other.'
'The gunshots were like a movie scene, everybody running in every direction and you can hear the gunshots everywhere not knowing where to run,' witness Suzy El Ayoubi added on Twitter.
Aliyah Imam told Fox 5 News that she was standing at a red light when a woman next to her fell to the ground after being hit in the hip. She claimed the gunman was 'shooting indiscriminately at people'.
Witness Kay Hudson, who said she was three feet away when a man was shot, said she heard seven shots then saw a man carrying an orange helmet lying on the ground.
Hudson said she began shouting for people to run and started fleeing down 33rd Street.
Jill Greenwood, who works as an account supervisor at Prosek Partners in the Empire State Building, told the Wall Street Journal that she heard several gun shots beginning at 9:04 a.m.
Route: The gunman ran a block north but was chased by a construction worker who alerted police
Details: Mayor Bloomberg, centre, and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, right, held a morning press conference near the scene and revealed the shooting was carried out by a disgruntled employee
Search: Police officers guard the entrance the building where Johnson lived in New York
ECHOES OF AN EARLIER TRAGEDY
Before this incident, the last shooting at the Empire State Building took place on February 23, 1997, when Ali Abu Kamal, a 69-year-old Palestinian, opened fire on the observation deck.
The teacher rode up the elevator with a .380-caliber Beretta semi-automatic handgun hidden under his coat and killed a 27-year-old man and wounded six others before he fatally shot himself in the head.
Law officials ruled that the attack was premeditated as the gunman had visited the building the day before the shooting.
It came after Kamal's once-wealthy existence suffered after bad investments.
But letters were also found on his body - one in English and one in Arabic - which attacked America, France and England over their treatment of Palestinians, indicating it was politically motivated.
This latest incident near the tower is a reminder that despite tight security, the city remains can do little to protect itself against a crazed gunman.
She said that people inside the building began yelling because an echo from the shots made it sound like the shooting was happening inside the building.
'We heard these gunshots, it sounded like fireworks. So, we both got up and went to the window and looked down,' Ms. Greenwood, 30, told the WSJ.
A Reddit user under the name of Titan413, said they were on a bus when they witnessed the shooting.
'At least four people got shot,' they wrote. 'Two on the northwest side of the street, one Empire State Building ticket guy in the middle of the crosswalk, and someone on the southwest corner. That was terrifying.
'At first I thought it was a truck going over one of those metal plates in the street, but then everyone on the bus got on the floor and people on the street started running.'
Helicopter footage apparently showed the gunman lying on a stretcher in handcuffs, before officers placed a white sheet over his body.
After the shootings, the sidewalks were awash with blood. Ercolino's body was carried away in a body bag.
Witness George King told ABC News he watched several people around him struck by bullets.
'I heard multiple gunshots, I'd say about 12 of them,' he said.
'I thought they were firecrackers, at first. I didn't know what was going on. Everyone started running for cover along with me. The girl that was running next to me fell down to the pavement and, when I looked at her, I could see she had been hit in the leg. She was bleeding from the leg.
'I noticed about five people who had been struck on the sidewalk or the street,' he said.
A fire department spokesman said it received a call about the shooting just after at 9 a.m. and that emergency units were on the scene within minutes. The FBI confirmed it was not terror related.
'What I want to do is assure everybody this is nothing to do with terrorism,' Bloomberg said at the press conference.
'Thank God nobody else was seriously injured. Again, there's an awful lot of guns out there,' the mayor, a staunch advocate of stricter gun laws, added.
Down: An image shows a victim lying on the ground. All the victims have been rushed to hospital
Gunned down: A man, believed to be the victim, lies on the ground after being shot
Dispute: Early reports suggested the gunfire was a result of a dispute between coworkers
Coincidentally, just minutes before the shooting, Bloomberg had warned about the dangers of 'too many guns on the streets' on his weekly radio show.
While discussing proposed tougher gun laws in Albany shortly before 9 a.m., he said: 'The argument guns don’t kill people, people kill people is one of the most disingenuous things you can say.'
'It does take a person to pull the trigger, but if they didn’t have the gun... We are the only developed country in the world with this problem,' the mayor continued.
The last shooting outside the iconic landmark took place on February 23 1997, when Ali Abu Kamal, a 69-year-old Palestinian, opened fire on the observation deck.
The Palestinian teacher killed one 27-year-old man and wounded six others before he fatally shot himself in the head.
Busy: It is an area busy with tourists and workers. Police have closed down the roads as they investigate
Fears: The 10 people believed to have been injured in the shooting have been taken to hospital
Scene: The shooting took place outside the Empire State Building, pictured, during rush hour
Law officials ruled that the attack was premeditated as the gunman had visited the building the day before the shooting.
Letters were found on his body - one in English and one in Arabic - which attacked America, France and England over their treatment of Palestinians.
This latest shooting comes less than two weeks after a knife-wielding man was shot dead by police near Times Square, another part of the city crammed with tourists.
Police shot 51-year-old Darrius Kennedy after he lunged at officers with a kitchen knife as horrified tourists looked on.via dailymail.co.uk
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