A lone gunman went on a rampage at a posh Park Avenue office building in New York, shooting dead a Bangladeshi immigrant police officer and three others before killing himself.
The shooter entered the building housing the world's largest multinational investment company, BlackRock, on Monday evening (local time), carrying an M4 rifle, shot police officer Didarul Islam, and a woman in the lobby, according to police.
He took a lift to the 33rd-floor office of a real estate company that owns the building, and after firing at random, killing two people, shot himself dead, police said.
One of the victims was a man and the other a woman.
Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain, choked back tears as he announced the death of Islam, who he said was an immigrant from Bangladesh.
"He was saving lives," he said at a news conference. "He was protecting New Yorkers."
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said 36-year-old Islam had two sons, and his wife was expecting another child.
"He made the ultimate sacrifice, shot in cold blood, wearing a uniform that stood for the promise that he made to this city," she said.
The gunman, Shane Tamura, 27, had a "documented mental health history," Tisch said.
The motive behind the shooting and why he chose to go to the real estate office on the 33rd floor is unknown.
The shooting stirred eerie recollections of another high-profile killing barely eight months ago, just four blocks away.
The CEO of a health insurance giant was gunned down outside a hotel by a young man who accused the health industry of profiteering and callousness in a manifesto.
The site of Monday's shooting, the 44-storey building on Park Avenue in the heart of Manhattan, houses BlackRock, which manages $11.5 trillion in assets.
When the shots were fired around 6:30 p.m., the building and surrounding areas went into a lockdown, as police searched for the gunman and checked for bombs, immediately after the shooting, police rushed Islam away from the building and tried to perform CPR on the side of a road before an ambulance rushed him to a hospital, where he died.
Later, people from the buildings were let out, walking with their hands up past police in tactical gear.
Tisch said that Tamura lived in Las Vegas and drove cross-country to the city, arriving before the rampage.
Police said they found some medicines, a revolver, ammunition, and the case for the M4 rifle in his black BMW, she said.
(With inputs from IANS)
