(Bloomberg) — Sebije Nelovic had simply taken out the trash from one convention room and was heading into one other when she heard the primary loud pops echo down the hallway.
“I stated, ‘What’s occurring? Firecrackers?’,” she advised Bloomberg Information on Thursday.
It wouldn’t have been unusual to listen to the engineers who labored upstairs transferring round. They wore heavy boots and generally got here down in teams, speaking and joking.
However then the door shook. After which it shattered.
“I noticed the glass fall — growth,” she stated. In the course of the ground stood a person with an assault rifle. “He put it up, straight at me. Oh, my God. God assist me.”
Nelovic, a cleaner at Rudin Administration for 27 years, turned and ran. She darted by means of the hallway, previous the elevators and stairs and into a non-public toilet the place she hid in a closet.
Exterior the door, the violence continued.
On Monday night, simply earlier than 6:30 p.m., Shane Tamura stepped out of a black BMW exterior 345 Park Avenue with a completely assembled AR-15–model rifle. He calmly walked into the constructing and started firing within the foyer.
First, he shot and killed Didarul Islam, an NYPD officer working for the constructing’s safety element. He then shot and fatally wounded safety guard Aland Etienne. Wesley LePatner, a senior managing director at Blackstone Inc., was additionally killed within the foyer. Craig Clementi, an worker within the NFL’s finance division, was shot and survived.
Investigators imagine Tamura was concentrating on the NFL’s workplaces, however took the flawed elevator financial institution and as an alternative arrived at Rudin Administration on the thirty third ground, the place Nelovic was working. There, he fired by means of a glass wall, stepped ahead, and opened fireplace.
Nelovic, from her hiding place inside the lavatory, may hear all of it.
“I heard one shot,” she stated. “Then I hear someone scream. And I stated, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”
She began worrying about Julia Hyman, a Rudin affiliate who typically labored late and who she noticed most nights whereas cleansing.
“She’s candy,” Nelovic stated of Hyman, 27, who she later discovered had additionally been killed within the assault. “She was candy.”
When police arrived they discovered Tamura useless on the scene. He had turned the rifle on himself.
Nelovic stayed quiet within the closet till officers arrived and opened the door. One in every of them helped her downstairs.
“He advised me, ‘You’re gonna be OK,’” she stated. However what she noticed within the foyer — the blood, the aftermath — left her shaken. “I’m not gonna neglect,” she stated. “By no means.”
She’s undecided if she’ll return — to the constructing, the place she’s labored for nearly three a long time, and to Rudin Administration, the family-run actual property firm whose homeowners she considers “like my household.”
“It’s scary to go to work,” she stated.
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