FATAL RAGE
Crazed Canadian hubby hunts down wife & kills her, self on FiDi street
An unhinged gunman confronted his wife on a lower Manhattan street Monday and shot her twice in the head in front of horrified onlookers before turning the gun on himself in a broad-daylight murder-suicide that stunned the city’s usually quiet Financial District, cops said.
Bursts of noisy gunfire sent shocked passersby racing for cover shortly before 9:30 a.m. at Morris St. and Trinity Place in a business-dominated neighborhood where wanton violence is extremely rare.
The 46-year-old shooter, believed to be from Canada and identified by sources as Xin Yu, was wearing a hat when he squared up to his 40-year-old wife and shot her two times in the head before blasting himself in the chest, officials said. The woman died at the scene, police said.
A woman walking to the subway station with her headphones on told the Daily News that she didn’t hear the shots, but that did not stop her from getting involved. She said when construction workers got her attention, she realized what had happened and called 911. The mortally wounded shooter was still holding on to the large, menacing semiautomatic pistol, according to the woman, who declined to give her name. She said a pedestrian passing by didn’t want to get involved, so she stepped in.
“I took the gun from his hand while he was still breathing,” the quick-thinking woman said. “I just did it just to be safe. I took it really quick and put it on the ground next to my foot.”
Her clever maneuver meant she had to have her fingerprints taken by cops so she could be eliminated as a suspect.
“I just did what needed to be done to make sure no one else got hurt,” she said. “I really didn’t think about it.”
Medics rushed the shooter to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Lower Manhattan, where he died.
Streets around the scene were closed for hours as police conducted an investigation. Officials said they did not immediately know what led up to the shooting.
The murder-suicide comes as the city grapples with a surge of shootings and homicides, but the Financial District has been largely untouched by the increase in violent crime.
The shooting marks the first murder of the year in the 1st Precinct, which covers the Financial District, and the neighborhood’s second shooting of the year.
The precinct saw just one homicide in the same time frame last year.
Overall, the city has seen 373 slayings across the five boroughs this year as of Sunday, a more than 33% increase from the 280 murders during the corresponding period last year.
Shootings have nearly doubled, with 1,276 through Sunday, compared with 653 last year.