CHELSEA, Manhattan — The family of hero security guard Aland Etienne spoke on Wednesday about accounts by police that he was killed in Monday’s shooting while trying to save lives.
Also on Wednesday, people who knew Wesley LePatner, the senior executive at the Blackstone investment firm, shared remembrances of her.
Workers at the building where the tragedy struck at the beginning of the week also talked about plans for reopening, as the investigation into what happened continues.
The building, at 345 Park Avenue, was surrounded by wooden construction barriers on Wednesday. Behind them, workers removed and replaced large panes of glass that had been shattered by bullets in the Monday evening attack.
On a ramp railing outside of the building, a memorial of flowers, balloons, and other keepsakes has been building for two days.
Early Wednesday afternoon, a woman who chose to only give her first name, Rachel, added a bouquet to the growing line of them.
She said that she worked at Blackstone, at a cubicle just past LePatner’s office. Tears rolled down Rachel’s face as she described a daily routine that was interrupted violently on Monday evening.
“She would say, ‘Hi,'” Rachel said, describing LePatner, “and such a warm spirit to be around.”
Rachel also described how she and about two dozen other Blackstone employees barricaded in their office and hid in a designated safe area during the active shooter emergency. That kind of danger is what another worker in the building, Joe Panasci, said he was grateful to the police for countering.
On Wednesday, he returned to thank the NYPD officers posted around the outside of the building.
“I saw the officers standing there,” Panasci said. “I wanted to shake their hand and tell them how thankful I am.”
He said that he didn’t yet know when he’d be able to return to work. “Our offices for my company are closed at least for the end of the week,” he said. “I know they’re kind of just talking to NYPD, and whenever they feel that the building is ready to go back in.”
He’d also come to the memorial that people had set up outside of 345 Park.
Meanwhile, the security guard who’d been in the lobby when the gunfire erupted was remembered as a hero at an event across town on Wednesday.
The brother of Aland Etienne, the security guard, was at the headquarters of 32BJ, the union of service workers of which Etienne is a member. He made an appearance at the union hall with mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, with whom family members had met on Wednesday afternoon, before a news conference.
Smith Etienne, the brother, described his brother as being part of a force of guardians, including police, who live — and in the case of his brother, die if they must — to serve the public.
“People who put their life on the line every single day,” Etienne said, “to do their part to make the city safer, to put their life on the line to protect others,” he continued, “and that’s what he did.”
His comments were in response to police accounts that his brother died while trying to reach a panic button and to disengage the elevators in the building, which the alleged gunman, Shane Tamura, ended up taking to the 33rd floor. There, police have said, he fatally shot real estate associate Julia Hyman.
Hyman’s funeral was held on Wednesday at Central Synagogue, just a few blocks away from the building where she lost her life.
On Thursday, slain NYPD Officer Didarul Islam will be funeralized at a mosque and funeral home in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, where he lived.