A man was fatally shot by police on the steps of a landmark New York City cathedral on Sunday after he began firing two semiautomatic handguns at the end of a Christmas choral concert, police said.
The gunfire began just before 4pm ET (21:00 GMT) at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, mother church of the Episcopal Diocese of New York.
A 45-minute concert held on the cathedral steps had just concluded and a crowd of several hundred people was drifting away when the gunman started shooting, sending people running down Amsterdam Avenue screaming and diving to the sidewalk.
Police officers detain a man who opened fire outside the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine in the Manhattan borough of New York City [Jeenah Moon/Reuters]A detective, a sergeant and a police officer who were at the event fired 15 rounds, killing the man, New York Police Commissioner Dermot Shea told reporters following the late-afternoon violence on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.