The rampage that left four people dead in a Midtown Manhattan building on Monday was the single shooting with the highest death toll in New York City in 25 years.
The last time New York City recorded a higher toll was in 2000, when five people were fatally shot and two were injured at a Wendy’s in Flushing, Queens, during a robbery, according to former police officials and published reports.
Shootings like the one on Monday, which left a police officer dead and forced workers inside the building to hide as the gunman sprayed bullets from an assault rifle, are rare in New York City, where security is tight at private companies and strict gun laws make obtaining high-powered weapons difficult, according to former New York police officers and security experts.
“I don’t recall a time in the last two decades that we’ve had a stranger mass shooting like this,” said James Essig, the former chief of detectives at the New York Police Department. “Just doesn’t happen here.”
The shooting in 2000 that killed five Wendy’s employees was focused and cruel, with two armed robbers forcing the workers into the freezer, tying them up and gagging them with plastic bags and duct tape before firing at them.
The shooting on Monday was characterized as a mass public shooting, which is defined by the F.B.I. as a shooting in a public place where at least four people are killed, not including the assailant.
In cases of mass public shootings, the killings are not connected to another underlying crime or motive like an armed robbery, drug deal or fight.
Mass public shootings are especially rare in the city, said William J. Bratton, a former police commissioner.
“What’s unique about this one is the use of a rifle,” he said. “They are very seldom used in New York City.”
But the city has seen some mass public shootings where a perpetrator wielded only a handgun.
In December 1995, a 22-year-old man with schizophrenia shot eight people, killing five of them, inside a shoe store in the Pelham Parkway neighborhood of the Bronx. The man began firing a 9-millimeter pistol after the clerk told him the store didn’t carry the boots he wanted in his size.
The victims included a 12-year-old boy who was trying on a pair of sneakers, his brother and their mother.
Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
Maria Cramer is a Times reporter covering the New York Police Department and crime in the city and surrounding areas.
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