NEW YORK — A plainclothes cop chased a scam artist through sidewalks crowded with holiday shoppers and tourists Thursday in the heart of Times Square, killing the suspect near a landmark Broadway hotel after a gunfight that shattered box-office and gift-shop windows, police said.
No one else was injured.
The 25-year-old suspect, Raymond Martinez of the Bronx, and his brother were trying to bully tourists into buying CDs along Broadway and 46th Street just before noon when he was recognized by a sergeant who runs a task force that monitors aggressive panhandling, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
The officer, Sgt. Christopher Newsom, asked them for their tax identification, which allows peddlers to sell on the streets, but Martinez took off running, through to the Marriott Marquis hotel’s passenger drop-off area.
Newsom pursued, then Martinez turned and fired with a Mac-10 9mm machine pistol that held 30 rounds; he got off two shots before it jammed, police said. The officer fired four times, striking the suspect in the chest and arms and killing him, Kelly said.
“We’re lucky the weapon jammed,” Kelly said.
The commissioner said the shooting preliminarily appeared to be within department guidelines, which allow for deadly force when an officer’s life is threatened.
Dave Kinahan, a tourist from Boston, was parking his car in a spot below street level at the hotel when he saw one man shooting another.
“I was 20 yards away,” Kinahan said. He said he thought, “Is this real or this a movie?”
The hotel is located in the Broadway theater district in the heart of Times Square. The Marquis Theatre, where “White Christmas” is playing, is in the hotel. Bullets from the gunfight shattered the window of a gift shop and a side window of the box office on the street, police said.
Duncan Stewart, a Broadway casting director for National Artists Management Co., has a 12th-floor office that overlooks Times Square. He said he was on the phone when he heard three loud pops.
Stewart has worked in Times Square for the past three years. He has gotten used to seeing the weird and wacky, but almost never anything violent.
“It’s bizarre. It’s one thing to see the Naked Cowboy day after day in Times Square, but a shooting is something different altogether,” he said.
