The E-Files: A Look Back at the 1997 Empire State Building Shooting
Twenty six years later, the shooting at iconic NYC landmark is another moment in the War on Terror
Sunday, February 23, 1997. A quiet, wintry day in the five boroughs. Usually a maintenance day for Emergency Service Unit Squad 1. Sunday’s were, and are, spent checking equipment and if the weather’s nice enough, giving the truck a good cleaning.
Such was the plan, until just after 5PM EST. Over the SOD radio, the call came in. “Shots fired, 86th floor, 350 Fifth Avenue”. Just a few days shy of the fourth anniversary of the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center, a major tragedy had unfolded at yet another Manhattan landmark.
The job in ESS Truck 1’s area, they immediately responded to the scene. From uptown at ESS Truck 2, Sergeant J.R. Garcia, accompanied by Officers Steve Vales, Dan Donnelly, Eddie Torres, and Joe Ocasio also responded to the madness.
A shocking and disturbing sight awaited the members of ESU upon their arrival to the 86th floor, home to the Empire State Building’s breathtaking observation deck. The belongings of the tourists who fled in a panic at the sound of gunfire, the blood of the wounded spilt about and the bodies of two mortally wounded men. One of a visiting 27-year old Danish tourist, who died at the scene.
Visiting with a friend from Connecticut, he was murdered while simply trying to enjoy the scenic view of New York City that the observation deck offered. The other, that of the shooter, 69-year old Abu Kamal. There he was laying, with a self inflicted gunshot wound to his head. The weapon he utilized in his killing spree, a .380-caliber Beretta 84 handgun, by his side. He died at a local hospital five hours later.
Working that day, Police Officer Ken Winkler, by then a 10-year veteran of Emergency Service, recalls his involvement in the incident, “Our response was pretty standard. Secure the scene and render aid. The difference was we were 80-something floors up. It was my first and only time on the observation deck. Once the injured were removed we assisted with the crime scene search. One thing that I will never forget is the view of the World Trade Center. We didn’t know it at that time but this was another terrorist attack in New York City.”
Though not defined as such immediately following the 1997 rampage, the facts would eventually come out courtesy of the shooter’s daughter. Telling the New York Daily News in 2007, Linda Kamal would state: “A Palestinian Authority official advised us to say the attack was not for political reasons because that would harm the peace agreement with Israel.” She went on to say, “We didn’t know that he was martyred for patriotic motivations, so we repeated what we were told to do.”
Standard response or not, the event marked another reminder of the ongoing threat ESU, and by extension, New York City faced in regards to terrorism. In the year 1997, ESU would face three such threats, the first only a month prior with four letter bombs sent to the United Nations on January 13th and the third coming five months later in Brooklyn, with a pipe bomb plot, thwarted thanks to the joint efforts of both the NYPD Bomb Squad & ESS Trucks 7 & 8.
Overshadowed by other major events in New York City in the years that’d follow, the murderous mayhem that erupted on that 86th floor that fateful winter Sunday in 1997 remains fresh in the minds of the innocent civilians who were caught up in it and the E-Men who tended to them in their moment of need.
And today, twenty-six years later, it marks another early salvo in the War on Terror, before it was labeled as such, and another stark reminder of the challenges the New York City Police Department’s Emergency Service Unit faces in keeping New York City safe from adversaries at home and abroad.