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Victims Wounded in Empire State Bldg Shooting Hit By NYPD Bullets

In the aftermath of the chaotic shooting outside the Empire State Building on 34th Street, questions are being raised about why the two NYPD officers fired so many shots at the shooter, injuring nine other people in the process.

After T-shirt designer Jeffery Johnson, 58, used his .45-caliber handgun to kill former colleague Steven Ercolino of Warwick, police said the officers came upon Johnson after being alerted by a construction worker that he just shot someone. The police fired 16 shots at Johnson, hitting him at least seven times and wounding nine people with ricocheting bullet and concrete fragments, police said. A video released by the police Friday night showed that the encounter with the two officers lasted less than 10 seconds.

From the video, it appears that Johnson had started to raise his gun toward the police when they opened fire. One eyewitness said Johnson fired once at the cops with his handgun although investigators have yet to recover ballistic evidence such as a spent shell casing to confirm that account, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.

“We see some ballistic damage to the [curb] flower pots by police fire and bullet fragments and ricochets, which may have caused civilians being shot or receiving graze wounds,” Browne said.

Of the nine people wounded, eight were  New York City residents and one resident of North Carolina, police said. Three of the wounded were women. Six were treated at Bellevue Hospital Medical Center and the other three at Weill Cornell Medical Center.

Last night, three men and one woman remained at Bellevue, a hospital spokeswoman said. All others had been released.

“All of those are not seriously wounded, and there is no expectation that any of them will do anything other than recover quickly,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday morning.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Johnson had been laid off about a year ago from Hazan Import Corp. at 10 West 33rd St. during a downsizing from his six-year job as a designer of women’s accessories.

Police said Johnson had periodically returned to the company to take care of health insurance issues.

Johnson blamed Ercolino, 41, who was a vice president at Hazan Import, for causing him to lose his job by not doing enough to sell his line of accessories. The two had even filed complaints against each other at the Manhattan South police precinct.

“They had issues,” said John Koch, the building manager at 10 West 33rd St. “They didn’t like each other.”

At around 9 a.m. Johnson walked up to Ercolino as he talked with a female former co-worker outside the company’s 33rd Street location and shot him without saying a word, Browne said. Johnson then fired again as the victim lay on the sidewalk and then put his gun in a canvas tote bag and calmly walked east to Fifth Avenue.

The former co-worker was Irene Timan, said her mother, Carol Timan of upstate Yulan.

Irene Timan, who lives in the Bronx, had met Ercolino by chance Friday morning, Carol Timan said. “She said she went down to get coffee and he [Ercolino] was there,” Timan said. “They were walking back into the building together when it happened.”

Irene Timan had worked at Hazan Import as a sales representative until two weeks ago, when she went to work for another firm in the same building, Timan said.

Anthony Collins, 23, of Staten Island, was on duty as the doorman at the 33rd Street office building when he heard shots.

“I heard about six pops. They were very loud,” Collins said. He left his post and walked outside and heard a woman screaming.

“As I looked up, I saw two shells flying in the air,” Collins said. “I saw a lot of blood and a couple bullets in his head.”

Police said Ercolino was shot five times. Security cameras didn’t record the killing but did show people running away from the scene. There are 80 tenants in the 12-floor building, Koch said.

Ercolino had worked on the seventh floor, Koch said.

Two construction workers followed Johnson as he went north along Fifth Avenue in front of the Empire State and one of them told the two officers that Johnson had just shot someone around the corner on 33rd Street, Browne said.

As the two cops approached Johnson, who was dressed in a business suit, he saw them out of the corner of his eye, drew his gun out of a black canvas bag and raised the weapon toward the cops, Browne said.

The video showed Johnson extending his arm and pointing at the officers, who then fire.

One of the officers fired seven times and another nine times, Browne said, adding it was likely the two cops fired simultaneously. The cops, who were not identified but are normally assigned to the Bronx, were on counterterrorism duty.

Police recovered a magazine with six rounds in the bag. The gun had been purchased by Johnson, who had no criminal record, in Florida legally in 1991 but was possessed illegally here, Browne said.

It was unclear what Johnson had been doing to support himself since he lost his job. Police didn’t know if he was married. Around his apartment building on East 82nd Street, Johnson was known as a likable man with a soft spot for animals.

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