Ahead of Rockefeller tree lighting, blocks from Midtown shooting, visitors say they feel safe

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About the shooting

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• A gunman shot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside the Hilton hotel in Midtown at 6:46 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 4, according to police.
• Thompson was shot in the chest and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was later pronounced deceased, police said.
• “This does not appear to be a random act of violence,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch told reporters.
• Read more about the shooting here.
• Read more about who Thompson was here.
  

Just blocks away from the site where a prominent CEO was shot and killed in what police say was a targeted attack on Wednesday morning, Midtown was buzzing in preparation for one of its biggest nights of the year: the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.

NYPD officials said the event — which is always teeming with security — would begin at 7 p.m. as planned, despite a massive ongoing search for the person who shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel on Sixth Avenue.

Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey told reporters at a press conference that the NYPD would be flooding the streets with plainclothes, strategic response and intel officers and that additional officers would also be patrolling the subways.

Tourists and locals who spoke to Gothamist near the base of the famous tree said they felt reassured by the promise of increased security.

“We feel that, yeah, they're doing everything they can to make it safe,” said Adrian Holloway, who was visiting the city with his wife from Bournemouth in England.

Holloway said he felt less anxious about attending the tree lighting after hearing officials say the shooter had been targeting Thompson specifically.

“It'd be different if it was a terrorist act and they were just shooting randomly into the public,” he added.

Mike Valentino, who was visiting from Cleveland, Ohio, agreed.

“I've spent the entire day in New York City. I came over from the Path Station at around 9 o'clock, and I've felt nothing but safe,” Valentino said as he took in the throngs of people passing by the still-unlit tree.

“It doesn't worry me at all," he said. "I've seen plenty of police presence out here today."

The blocks near Rockefeller Plaza were already a maze of police barricades around noon on Wednesday, as officers continued to organize them into long lines to restrict the flow of people.

Oklahoma native and first-time visitor Mikela Connella said she’d felt safer in New York than she expected despite being just blocks away from the shooting Wednesday morning while waiting in line for a taping of the talk show “LIVE with Kelly and Mark.”

“We were like, ‘goodness, that's pretty darn close.’ And our folks in Oklahoma also texted us about what happened,” she said. “You hear about crime and stuff like that being from where I'm at, and I've actually felt relatively safe here.”

Connella said she planned to fly home prior to the iconic two-hour ceremony, where celebrities and performers would help usher in the holiday season before flicking on the power to more than 50,000 multicolored lights on the 74-foot-tall Norway spruce.

Maddrey said New Yorkers deserved to be able to witness the spectacle despite the shocking shooting, which was an anomaly for the area. Before Wednesday’s incident, there had been no fatal shootings this year in the 18th Precinct, which covers the western portion of Midtown below Central Park, according to NYPD data compiled by Gothamist.

“This is a terrible event, but we’re going to go on and people are going to be able to enjoy the tree lighting tonight,” Maddrey said.