Office cleaner who came face-to-face with the Manhattan gunman details his deadly rampage

CNN

6 days ago

Sebije Nelovic always felt safe at 345 Park Avenue. For nearly three decades, the Albanian native cleaned the ritzy Manhattan skyscraper that houses several corporate headquarters in one of New York's toniest neighborhoods.
That sense of serenity was shattered Monday when a man stormed the Midtown building with an assault rifle and unleashed a hailstorm of bullets, killing three people in the lobby.
Then he took an elevator to the 33rd floor – where Nelovic was cleaning.
Nelovic loved working in the building and was familiar with all the employees up and down the skyscraper.
'I have worked as a cleaner at 345 Park Avenue for 27 years – since 1998,' she said in a statement provided by her property service workers union, 32BJ SEIU. 'I know everyone in the building.'
At 6:28 p.m. Monday, employees were still working on the 33rd floor – including Julia Hyman, a 27-year-old associate at Rudin Management, which owns the skyscraper.
The young Cornell graduate often stayed until 8:30 p.m., Nelovic said, and the two women connected during their evenings at the office.
On Monday, 'I was collecting garbage like I do every shift,' Nelovic said. 'I was on the 33rd floor when I heard something that sounded like firecrackers.'
She peered around the corner to investigate the noise.
'I could see the glass door in front of the reception desk at the office on the 33rd floor. Suddenly, the glass door was shaking. It started falling down – boom.'
Then she saw the killer.
'This guy came in the middle of the door, and pointed his gun at me. He started shooting around me,' Nelovic recalled.
'I put my hands up and said, 'I'm a cleaning lady. I'm a cleaning lady.' 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.'
The 65-year-old started sprinting down a hallway.
'I found a closet, and I went inside and locked the door,' she said.
'I started praying. I heard shouting down the hallway. I sat in there for 5 minutes, or maybe 10, when I heard him walking down the hallway,' Nelovic said.
'He shot the door to the closet, and I was so scared. But I was okay. I heard him walk down the hallway, and then I remembered Julia,' she said. 'I knew she was at her desk, and I thought, God, help her.'
After a while, the sounds of gunfire stopped. An ominous silence filled the air. Nelovic had no idea where the killer was.
'Then my supervisor started calling and texting me. I told him I was in a closet, and he told me to stay there,' she said.
'I got scared about making noise, so I turned my phone off. I sat in the closet for 2 hours, maybe 3 hours. I was praying.'
Finally, officers came and told Nelovic it was safe to leave the closet. The murderer had turned the gun on himself and was no longer a threat.
'I didn't want them to call my husband or my son – I didn't want to scare them – so one of them drove me home,' Nelovic said.
But by the time she got home, her son had already seen the news and was terrified for his mom.
'I told him, thanks to God, I'm okay,' Nelovic said.
But her agony was far from over.
Nelovic stayed glued to the TV, trying to find answers for an inexplicable horror.
'I had to see what happened, and why,' she said. 'That's how I found out about Julia. She was so nice.'
Hyman was the fourth victim killed in the mass shooting.
It turns out the killer wasn't targeting either of the women or anyone on the 33rd floor, authorities said.
Investigators believe the gunman was headed for the NFL's headquarters, but he took the wrong elevator. A note found in his pocket claimed he was suffering from CTE, a disease linked to head trauma often associated with football players, a source told CNN.
But none of that eases Nelovic's anguish, which has only intensified since the massacre.
'Every day, I get more stressed and shaken. A woman is dead on my floor – and it could have been me,' she said.
'I used to get scared to go home on the train at night. My shift ends at midnight. But going to work – I wasn't scared. I was safe there, and I was happy – for 27 years.'
CNN's David Williams contributed to this report.