Times Square Shooting: Police Offer Kills Armed Man

by Gordon Clark | December 10, 2009 at 11:38 am

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There has been a fatal shooting in Times Square, New York City. A plainclothes police officer shot and killed an armed man on Thursday morning. The officer was reporting to panhandler harassment reports from street vendors when the situation suddenly turned violent, and a fatal shooting occurred.

This is how the Times Square shooting played out:

A police officer was called to investigate a street panhandler harassment claim. The two panhandlers were intimidating tourists into buying their counterfeit CDs. The panhandlers would ask the tourist their name, write it on a CD and then make the tourist buy it because it has their name on it.

When the plainclothes police officer approached the panhandlers the two they ran away. When the police man began to chase after them one of the men fired a semi automatic gun at the offer. The shots missed him but went through some windows of the Marriot Marquis hotel.

The police officer fired back and shot one of the men. The police and paramedics were called minutes later and the man was taken to the St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital. The hospital reported that the man had died.

The police said they recovered the man’s machine pistol at the scene. Investigators found 27 live rounds of ammunition in the gun, and one shell casing on the ground.

Shannon Maggio, 32, a visitor from New Orleans, was on the 16th floor of the nearby Edison Hotel in a room facing the Marriott, with both windows open, when she heard yelling, and then an eruption of gunfire.

“I heard it clear as day,” she said. “I’d never heard a gunshot before, but I knew it was a gunshot. Pow-pow-pow-pow — just like that. Then I heard a guy yell. Then sirens.” She added: “I froze. My hair stood on end.”

Neither the street vendors names nor the officer's name has been released.