Steve Ercolino told a female co-worker he wasn’t feeling well as they walked down West 33rd Street to their office yesterday morning.
The 41-year-old clothing-company vice president got to the front door at around 9 a.m. — and was immediately ambushed by a workplace enemy out to settle an old score.
Ercolino never saw him coming.
“I saw Jeff Johnson come from behind a white truck and pull out a gun. Steve didn’t see it because he was talking to me,” the colleague, Irene Timan, told The Post.
“Steve was standing at my right. Jeff Johnson came from the left side,” she added. “He just came right in front of Steve, pulled out a gun, and opened fire.
“Steve screamed, and I ran.”
Timan said the crazed killer — who had been laid off from the Hazan Imports fashion company last year — showed no sign of remorse as he pumped round after round into Ercolino.
“He just kept shooting and shooting and shooting,” Timan said. “Everybody started running away from the gunman. I called 911.
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“The gunman continued to fire shots. He had already shot him in the stomach. I ran.
“I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t stop it,” she said. “I couldn’t do anything!”
Electrician Kevin O’Connell, 27, had been on a break when he heard the shots and looked out of a ninth-floor window of the Empire State Building to see a horrifying scene.
“The [victim] was on the ground, and the guy shot him,” he said. “He stood right over him and shot him two more times.
“Then he walked off.”
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John Sullivan, 52, another worker at the Empire State Building, said Johnson had a disturbing look of calm on his face after blasting Ercolino.
“He walked like he was in the back yard,” Sullivan said. “People [following him] were screaming, ‘The man in the gray suit! The man in the gray suit!’ ”
Even as he caused complete chaos around the world-famous tourist attraction, Johnson showed no sign of panic as he walked around the corner and headed up Fifth Avenue toward cops.
“He knew what he was doing,” said Sullivan, who suspected Johnson was planning a suicide-by-cop. “He knew he was going to die. He didn’t want to live.
“He knew he was walking to his death.”
He approached cops on Fifth Avenue, raised his .45-caliber handgun and prompted the officers to open fire.
“I saw two police officers pulled their guns out,” said a witness who identified himself only as Joey, a 44-year-old window cleaner. “I heard bang, bang again.”
As the bullets flew, people ran for their lives and ducked anywhere for cover.
“It’s like a war zone here,” said Sheryll Sarmiento, 33, an accessories worker on West 33rd Street. “Everyone’s shaken.”
Marc Engel, an accountant who was riding to a meeting on the M34 bus near the shooting, said fellow riders screamed, “Get down! Get down!”
“When I got off the bus, I did see that people were shot. A person was laying in the street,” he added. “I saw a person laying against a building, again with a grimace of pain.
“To me, it looked like the person who was lying against the building got shot and then was dripping enough blood to leave a stream.”
Engel also saw a person lying shot in the street.
“They were shot,” he said. “They were laying in the street not doing anything, with a grimace on their face.”
Austrian tourist Raphael Riegler, 19, was in line for tour-bus tickets when one of the tour workers was struck.
“Behind me the shooting started,” he said. “In the middle of the street, and a man in a blue jacket [a tour worker] fell down.
“Another man was shot in the foot. He tried to run, run, run. He fell at the bus stop.”
Rebecca Fox, 27, who works near the scene, said she was walking on 34th Street near Fifth Avenue when she heard the screams.
“At first, I thought it was a celebrity sighting,” she said. “But then I saw a woman who was shot leaning against the [Empire State] Building, and she was shot in the foot.
“There was blood on the sidewalk. It looked like a scene straight out of ‘CSI’ — only it was real.”
Ivan Rowe, 62, said that people running up the street were knocking him down and that some were screaming, “This is crazy!”
“It was really scary. People were flying down the street,” he said. “You could see the fear in their eyes. Not a nice picture.”
Tanisha Weekly, 27, said people ran for shelter inside the Circa pizza parlor, where she works.
“A lot of people ran into the store to get away,” she said. “When I heard more shots, I came back inside, and we locked the doors. I haven’t been outside since.”
Thomas Iuso, a 30-year-old IT worker from The Bronx, was among those who ran from the gunfire.
“Everyone started running down Fifth Avenue,” he said. “We were running for our lives.
“There had to be at least 50 people running. The police were telling everyone to go inside and that the gunman was still at large.”
Navy servicewoman Hassan Cisse, 22, of The Bronx, described the aftermath as a scene from war.
“I saw a black man and a white woman on the ground,” she said. “They were on their back. The man wasn’t moving. They covered his stomach with a white sheet.
“The woman was moving a little bit, moving her head slowly.
“The ambulance came and took them. They were lying in the middle of the street.”
Additional reporting by Kevin Fasick, Natasha Velez, Wilson Dizard, Georgett Roberts and Amber Sutherland