It seemed strange, the police official said, to have this mob of television and newspaper reporters braying at him from behind the yellow police tape that cordoned off the Wendy's restaurant on Main Street in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens. Listen as It Happens click Anywhere else in the city, anywhere else in the world, what had gone on inside that restaurant would have been shocking. But here, in the heart of this prosperous immigrant community, it was unthinkable, he said. But I guess this can happen anywhere. They ordered light meals, ate and chatted with the staff.
Police say the gunmen knew at least one of the victims.
Authorities would not rule out the possibility that the suspect was a former employee. That, police said, could explain what happened next. The gunmen herded all seven staff members into the basement, where they bound them, gagged them with duct tape, ordered to them to lie face down and then shot them execution style. Five of the victims died and another is brain dead, authorities say. Co-workers stunned News of the crime ripped through the neighborhood that fans out from Main Street, a community of neat red brick homes and bustling shops, the kind of place where people chase the American dream and learn to prosper.