At least five people, including a police officer who was an immigrant from Bangladesh, were killed on Monday after a gunman walked into a skyscraper in central Manhattan in the United States and opened fire in broad daylight.
According to a BBC report, New York Police Department officer Didarul Islam, 36, and four others, including the shooter, was killed in the incident.
Officer Didarul Islam was married and his wife is pregnant with their third child, the report added.
The suspect, identified as 27-year-old Shane Tamura, died from an 鈥榓pparent self-inflicted gunshot wound,鈥� the report said.
According to a report of AFP, a fifth victim was also in a critical condition after being shot, New York mayor Eric Adams told a late-night briefing at a hospital near the scene of the shooting.
鈥榃e lost four souls to another act of senseless violence,鈥� Adams said, without counting the gunman.
Adams said that two other males and a female died and another man remained in a critical condition, officials said without giving any preliminary motive for the shootings.
The gunman was caught on surveillance footage leaving a black BMW carrying an M-4 rifle before entering the building, immediately opening fire on a police officer before 鈥榮praying the lobby鈥� with bullets, police commissioner Jessica Tisch told a press conference.
An office tower block at 345 Park Avenue 鈥� home to hedge fund giant Blackstone, auditor KPMG and the National Football League 鈥� was apparently targeted by the gunman, Tisch said. She said that the suspect was believed to have acted alone.
The incident began at about 6:00pm 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.
There have been 254 mass shootings in the United States this year including Monday鈥檚 incident in New York, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
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 that she had been briefed on the shooting.
The frontrunner in the race for mayor Zohran Mamdani wrote on X that he was 鈥榟eartbroken to learn of the horrific shooting in midtown and I am holding the victims, their families, and the NYPD office in my thoughts.鈥�
