A security guard was shot and wounded outside the Manhattan supportive housing nonprofit where he worked Monday afternoon, police said.
The 49-year-old victim was shot at Madison Ave. and E. 28th St., just a couple blocks from Madison Square Park, in NoMad, about 12:25 p.m., cops said.
The victim was coming out of a nearby Whole Foods when he was attacked, the gunman opening fire “in broad daylight, in front of 70 people,” an eyewitness said.
“There were two shots. He was shot right here in the side. I could see the bullet hole,” the witness, a TV crewman working on the second season of the CBS spy thriller “CIA,” told the Daily News as he pointed to his stomach. “He was lying on the sidewalk screaming in pain.”
“A lady in a wheelchair got out of the chair and bent over him,” added the witness, who asked that his name be withheld. “He was still talking. She was saying, ‘Who shot you?’”
The victim is expected to survive, police said. Medics rushed him to Bellevue Hospital.
The shooter, wearing a blue sweater, ran off and has not been caught, cops said.
The victim works as a security guard at the Prince George — a former hotel on E. 28th St. just down the block from where the gunman opened fire — which was retrofitted in 1999 to provide supportive housing for low-income people and the formerly homeless.
“He’s one of the nicer security guards,” a Prince George resident, who gave his name as Zach, told the Daily News. “He didn’t seem like he was rude, like some of the security guards in this building.”
“There are a lot of tenants in the building that are very unstable people,” he added. “A lot of people, since COVID, from shelters and stuff have moved in here. A lot of those people are not really fit to live in a building like this.”
The Prince George — which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places — includes 416 units of affordable housing operated by Breaking Ground, a non-for-profit that builds and operates supportive housing at locations throughout the city.
“Breaking Ground is deeply saddened by the incident involving one of our security guards near the Prince George earlier today,” Miranda Hall, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit organization, said in a statement. “Our thoughts are with them and their loved ones, and the safety of our tenants, staff and community is our top priority.”
Breaking Ground declined to share information about the shooting, citing the ongoing police investigation.
