A man was shot and injured by New York City police on Sunday after shooting into crowds gathered for a Christmas carol concert outside a city church.
No one in the public was affected by the gunfire in the vicinity of St John the Divine Cathedral in Manhattan, New York Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said. Three police officers at the scene fired fifteen times in the direction of the man, whose identity was not disclosed, hitting him at least once in the head, said Mr. Shea.
Police found two handguns on site and a nearby bag containing a full tank of gasoline, ropes, cable and many knives, he added.
A spokeswoman for the New York City Police Department had earlier said that officers used their guns after the man began shooting.
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An AFP reporter who witnessed the scene reported that the man fired outside Saint John the Divine Church in Manhattan as a few hundred people began to disperse after the chanting ended.
“I heard two or three detonations,” she said. “I looked up, and maybe ten yards from me on the steps there was a guy shooting,” she said.
“I saw the flames coming out of the cannon, I started to run, to save my skin.”
Martha Stolley, another witness, estimated that the man fired eight or ten times before he was shot by police.
“He was shooting without aiming,” she told AFP, adding that the man was shouting “Take me down, kill me!”
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