Following the mass shootings first in Aurora, Colorado and then at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, the shooting outside the Empire State Building in New York marks the third mass shooting this summer in the United States. The incident occurred at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue, near New York’s most famous skyscraper.

Just after 9AM, local time, a gunman opened fire in the street near the Empire State Building. According to the New York Post, two men who were coworkers started arguing in the street during the morning rush. They began fighting on the pavement when one of them drew a gun and shot the other fatally in the head, after striking him three times. The shooter then put his gun in his black bag and walked away from the scene.

A local construction worker, Chris Ogden, saw the gunman opening fire and then informed officers near the Empire State Building. New York Police Department arrived at the scene within a few minutes after receiving the emergency call. The New York Police Department officers, who were on foot, confronted the gunman who turned to his gun and fired at them. One of the officers killed the gunman in the confrontation. Police later confirmed that the gunman had indeed been shot dead.

Counting the shooter, there were a total of two deaths at the scene and nine more people were injured — four women and five men. Some of them may have been shot accidentally by officers, but they have all been taken to a number of hospitals in the city and fortunately none of them were seriously wounded. They are all expected to recover quickly.

The FBI has confirmed that the shooting was not terrorist-related. The incident was nothing more than a workplace dispute, but still caused a sense of panic in the city of New York, whose inhabiters have lived through all too familiar scenes in the past.

Police commissioner Ray Kelly identified the shooter as Jeffrey Johnson, aged 53. Johnson shot his 41-year-old former manager using a 45 caliber semiautomatic handgun. The shooter was a Hazan Imports employee for the last six years, designing women’s accessories and clothes and he had been fired from his job about a year ago as part of downsizing in the company. While the incident took place near the the Empire State Building, the landmark was not otherwise connected to the shooting.

New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, one of America’s biggest gun law reform advocates, said that “soothing words are nice, but maybe it is time that the two people who want to be President of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it,” expressing his discontent for both President Obama and his republican rival Mitt Romney.

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The man responsible for the massacre that killed six people in a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin shot himself in the head, as confirmed by the FBI on August 8. The authorities have maintained so far that the shooter, Wade Michael Page, died from being shot during a confrontation with a police officer after the killings.

FBI Special Agent in Wisconsin, Teresa Carlson, said on a news conference on Wednesday that, according to the security video footage of the scene, it was the shot in the head, not the one from the police officer received in the stomach, that killed Page. Therefore, he committed suicide when he was already injured by the first officer, who responded to emergency calls in the temple of Oak Creek, south of Milwaukee.

Carlson, who leads the investigation, also confirmed that Page acted alone and did not blame anyone else for the shooting. In the hours after the incident, local police did not rule out that Page had received support.

Carlson said the FBI is going to keep investigating, to determine the causes which would lead the Army veteran to act against a religious temple, and why he would choose the one on Oak Creek.

“This is a guy that has moved around a lot, and so we are very, very thorough. We’re going to try to talk everybody that he may have had contact with or anywhere that he may have been. So we’ve got leads going in a lot of different places.”

Although Page’s supremacist ideas are well known, there is still a lot to be clarified: “We may never know exactly why he chose that place at that time,” Steven Conley, an FBI assistant, told reporters. “We may have a good idea of his motives when the investigation is finished, but the reasons may have disappeared with Page.”

Authorities also said on press conferences that Lt. Brian Murphy, the veteran Oak Creek police officer who first arrived at the temple and was shot at least eight times, is recovering.

“He’s progressing amazingly and we’re very, very thankful for that,” said Oak Creek Police Chief John Edwards. “Yesterday he was up walking and they had him sitting up for a period of time.”

As part of the investigation, police arrested Page’s former girlfriend on August 7 as a “felon in possession of a firearm,” according to South Milwaukee police investigator Michael Hill. However, she is not being accused of playing a role in the slaughter.

Image Courtesy of   BC Gov Photos

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