An insurance company vice president summoned two employees into his midtown Manhattan office Monday and fired 15 shots, killing both before turning one of his three guns on himself, authorities said.
Police said John Harrison, 53, a former FBI agent, summoned a male manager and a female fraud investigator into his 15-by-15-foot glass-walled corner office filled with law-enforcement memorabilia at 8:20 a.m.
After a brief confrontation, he emptied all 10 rounds from a 9 mm handgun and shot at least five bullets from a .45-caliber handgun, hitting both employees several times, and then fatally shot himself, police said.
Panicked employees, who had been temporarily relocated to the building last fall after fleeing their former offices in One World Trade Center, called police.
Harrison, Isabel Munoz, 36, and Vincent LaBianca, 34, all worked in the anti-fraud unit at Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield. They were pronounced dead at the scene.
LaBianca was a manager working for Harrison, and Munoz, a single mother, worked for LaBianca, sources said.
Co-workers told investigators that Harrison, who was married, and LaBianca were both romantically involved with Munoz. Whether the relationships still were active was unclear, police sources said.
On Monday night, investigators were trying to determine what sparked the shootings.
Sandra Carroll, a spokeswoman for the FBI office in Newark, said Harrison left the agency in 1989. He had worked as an agent in the Newark branch and as a supervisor in Trenton, N.J., she said.
A source said that before Harrison worked for the FBI, he was an police officer in Philadelphia in the 1970s.
Munoz, LaBianca and Harrison also had worked in Empire Blue Cross’ World Trade Center office, though Harrison was not officially hired until Sept. 10, 2001, a source said. It was unclear whether Munoz, who worked for the company for about 10 years, and LaBianca, who was hired in 1990, were at their desks on Sept. 11.
Nine employees and two long-term consultants of Empire, which occupied 10 floors in the World Trade Center, died in the terrorist attack on the twin towers.
