A New York City cleaning worker who came face to face with the shooter in the Manhattan office building attack is now speaking out about her terrifying encounter, saying she was “so scared” and hid in a closet for hours until police arrived.
Sebije Nelovic said gunman Shane Tamura exited an elevator bank, pointed his rifle straight at her and started firing through the glass reception door on the 33rd floor of 345 Park Avenue on Monday night, according to the New York Times.
“He started shooting around me. I put my hands up and said, ‘I’m the cleaning lady, I’m the cleaning lady!'” Nelovic said in a statement released by her union, the 32BJ SEIU. “But I realized — he comes with a machine gun. He’s not going to know who I am. He’s going to shoot, no matter what.”
Nelovic, 65, then ran down a hallway and locked herself in a closet.
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“I started praying,” Nelovic recalled in the statement, according to the New York Post. “He shot the door to the closet and I was so scared, but I was OK. I heard him walk down the hallway.”
Nelovic said she remembered that victim Julia Hyman of Rudin Management was supposed to be at her desk and thought “God, help her.”
The cleaning worker also said her supervisor began calling and texting her to see if she was safe. She told the New York Times that she said to the supervisor at one point that “The guy is on my floor!”
“I told him I was in a closet, and he told me to stay there,” Nelovic added in the statement released by her union, according to the New York Post. “I got scared about making noise, so I turned my phone off. I sat in the closet for two hours, maybe three hours. I was praying.”
The rampage ended when Tamura turned the gun on himself. Nelovic eventually left the building after police arrived.
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Hyman was one of four victims in the shooting.
“She was so nice,” Nelovic said to the New York Times. “I feel so sorry for her. I feel so sorry for everyone.”
Nelovic added that she will no longer return to 345 Park Avenue in the wake of the shooting.
“I’m scared to go there,” she said to the newspaper. “God help me.”
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