A gunman died during a shootout with police in the middle of a busy Madison Avenue sidewalk on Thursday evening as a crowd of rush-hour commuters narrowly escaped harm, a spokesman for the Police Department said
The gunman, identified by the police as Elijah Brown, 20, was struck by officers’ bullets between East 95th and 96th Streets after threatening several people in the neighborhood. He was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital, three blocks north, where he was pronounced dead.
No one else was struck or injured, though the gunplay occurred just after people had stepped off a nearby M.T.A. bus, Philip Rivera, chief of patrol for the Police Department, said at a news conference on Thursday night. The man “shot at our officers on a busy sidewalk with civilians in close proximity,” Chief Rivera said.
By Friday morning, the scene still showed traces of the previous evening’s mayhem. Pedestrians stepped around a streak of blood on the sidewalk behind a bus shelter, which was also spattered. Streaks on a residential building facing the street revealed apparent ricochets.
The shootout was the culmination of an alarming series of events, the police said. At 7 p.m., Mr. Brown had been riding an elevator with another man inside an apartment building near the corner of Madison Avenue and East 106th Street. The two men chatted as the elevator descended, Chief Rivera said.
Then, without warning or provocation, Mr. Brown pulled a handgun and aimed it at the other man, Chief Rivera said. He kept the gun pointed at the other man until the elevator reached the ground floor, where Mr. Brown walked out of the building. He walked a block north, to a deli, where he went behind the counter and aimed the weapon at a deli worker.
“Call 911,” Mr. Brown told the worker, according to the police. “I’m going down to the hospital to shoot it up.”
Mr. Brown stole the deli worker’s phone, then walked south on Madison Avenue and went into the emergency department at Mt. Sinai. He came out again, placed the gun on the ground beside a tree, the police said, and walked back in.
Mr. Brown told an off-duty police officer working for the hospital as a security guard that he had a gun. As the officer tried to escort him out, Mr. Brown grabbed him from behind and they struggled. The emergency department staff sheltered in place until it was confirmed that the threat had passed, Brendan G. Carr, the C.E.O. of Mount Sinai Health System, said in an email sent on Friday afternoon to hospital employees.
Mr. Brown retrieved his gun and proceeded south while the off-duty officer called for assistance. At Madison Avenue between 96th and 95th Streets, officers in several vehicles stopped to apprehend him.
Chaos ensued, according to the police. Mr. Brown began firing at officers as they stepped out of their vehicles, Chief Rivera said. The officers returned fire, striking Mr. Brown fatally.
Mr. Brown’s movements and the final shootout were captured by surveillance cameras along his route and body cameras worn by the police officers, Chief Rivera said. In video captured by cameras facing the sidewalk near 96th Street, a man walks unhurriedly north on Madison, carrying what appears to be a gun in his left hand. Three police officers run after him. Then they stop, draw their weapons, and fire. Four pedestrians fall to the ground in fright.
The man turns and appears to fire at least one shot toward the officers on the sidewalk, then points the weapon at another officer in the street. The officers fire, striking him, and he falls to the ground.
Marissa Zackowitz said she had been in her apartment on East 96th Street at the time of the shooting. Her first indication of trouble had come when her nanny took longer than usual to return from walking the family’s two dogs, she said. When the nanny returned the dogs were shaking in fear, Ms. Zackowitz said. The nanny told her that they had been caught near the violence.
“It was scary,” said Ms. Zackowitz, 49. “This is the first time in my life I’ve ever said, ‘I want to leave this city.’”
Outside the building at Madison Avenue and 106th Street where the incident began, residents on Friday morning said they hadn’t witnessed anything and did not know Mr. Brown. Many seemed unfazed.
“It’s horrible,” said Ulysses Coleman, 62, who lives in the building where Mr. Brown pulled a gun in the elevator. “It’s something that we see every day, though.”
Anusha Bayya contributed reporting.
Christopher Maag is a reporter covering the New York City region for The Times.
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