Two people were killed and at least eight wounded in a shooting outside the Empire State Building on Friday, a New York police source said, creating chaos and shocking tourists and commuters who witnessed the bloody scene.
One of the dead was the shooter, the source said, adding there was no apparent link to terrorism.
A white tarpaulin covered what was believed to be a body in front of the entrance to the office building, but police declined to confirm if it was the shooter.
A police source said the assailant, who worked nearby, was believed to be a disgruntled employee who fired at a person against whom he had a grievance. The nature of the grievance was not known.
“I heard the gunshots. It was like pop, pop, pop,” said Dahlia Anister, 33, who works at an office near the 102-storey Empire State Building.
The shooting started shortly after 9 a.m. local time on the busy sidewalk on Fifth Avenue outside the midtown Manhattan building.
It came at the height of the tourist season outside one of New York City ’s most popular attractions.
Police cordoned off the area around the building, one of the most recognisable in the world.
The Empire State Building is two blocks from Pennsylvania Station and eight blocks from Grand Central Terminal, two of New York City’s foremost transportation hubs.
Mail courier James Bolden, 31, said he saw a “guy lying on the (sidewalk), bleeding from the neck and barely breathing”.
“Everybody was crowded around him taking pictures and video, and security guys were yelling at everybody to get back and give him space. He was barely breathing.”
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 lying down and there was blood pooling (around him),” said Justin Kellis, 35, who works nearby.
The United States has had two other mass shooting cases this summer. On July 20 a gunman opened fire at 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 killed six people and critic-ally wounded three at a Sikh temple outside Milwaukee before police shot him dead in an attack authorities treated as an act of domestic terrorism.
This was the second high-profile shooting incident in two weeks in New York’s tourist-heavy midtown Manhattan. On August 12 police shot and killed a knife-wielding suspect as he ran through Saturday afternoon traffic and pedestrians in Times Square.