"God helps me": 345 Park Ave. Cleaner is reminiscent of the walk -in with armed man | Today news

(Bloomberg) – Sebije Nelovic has just taken the trash from one conference room and was on her way to another when she heard that the first hard pops were echoing in the hallway. “I said, ‘What’s going on? Firecrackers? ‘,’ She told Bloomberg News on Thursday. It would not have been strange to hear the engineers who worked above. They carried heavy boots and sometimes came down in groups and talked and joked. But then the door trembled. And then it breaks. “I saw the glass fall – tree,” she says. In the middle of the floor stands a man with an assault rifle. “He set it up, straight to me. Oh, my God. God helps me. ‘ Nelovic, a cleaner at Rudin Management for 27 years, turned and ran. She walked through the hallway, past the elevators and stairs and in a private bathroom where she hid in a closet. Outside the door, the violence continued. Monday night, just before 6:30 pm, Shane Tamura walked out of a black BMW outside 345 outside Park Avenue with a fully composed AR-15-style rifle. He quietly entered the building and started shooting in the foyer. First, he shot and killed Didarul Islam, a NYPD officer, for the security detail of the building. He then shot the security guard Aland Etienne and fatally wounded. Wesley Lepatner, a senior managing director at Blackstone Inc., was also killed in the foyer. Craig Clementi, an employee in the NFL’s finance department, was shot and survived. Investigators believe Tamura targeted the NFL’s offices, but adopted the wrong elevator and instead arrived at Rudin Management on the 33rd floor, where Nelovic worked. There he shot through a glass wall, stepped forward and caught fire. Nelovic, from her hiding place in the bathroom, could hear it all. “I heard one shot,” she says. “Then I heard someone screaming. And I said, Oh my God, O my God, O my God. ” She starts to worry about Julia Hyman, a Rudin co -worker who worked regularly late and who saw the most evenings while cleaning. “She’s sweet,” Nelovic said of Hyman, 27, who she later found out that he also died in the attack. “She was sweet.” When police arrived, they found Tamura dead at the scene. He turned the gun on himself. Nelovic stays still in the closet until officers arrive and open the door. One of them helped her down. “He told me,” You’re going to be fine, “she said. But what she saw in the foyer – the blood, the aftermath – shook her. “I won’t forget,” she said. ‘Never.’ She is not sure if she will return-after the building, where she has worked for almost three decades, and to Rudin Management, the family-controlled property business whose owners she views “like my family”. “It’s narrow to go to work,” she said. More stories like these are available on Bloomberg.com © 2025 Bloomberg LP