Metro

Friends, family say goodbye to Empire State Building shooting victim

Hundreds of friends and family bid a final goodbye to the sales executive shot to death in last week’s Empire State Building gun attack at his funeral in White Plains today.

Steven Ercolino, 41, was remembered as a loving uncle and a good son by his sister Mary Rashford, who eulogized him during the 11 a.m. ceremony at Our Lady of Sorrows church.

“He was the epitome of how a son should treat and respect a mother. He was my dad’s best friend,” she told the crowd of about 200 as she stood beside her other brothers, Peter and Paul.

The mourners were all handed rubber bracelets bearing his name and the words “You will always be remembered.

The bands were colored green and had a football emblazoned on them because of his love of the New York Jets.

Rashford remembered her late brother as a snappy dresser who “rocked a suit,” and as a well-liked, easy-going guy.

“He had an amazing ability to make people laugh and even more amazingly to laugh at himself,” Mary said.

She also talked of his devotion to his girlfriend, Ivette Rivera.

“You’ve fulfilled him, and you were his soul mate,” she said. “You completed him. You are our family, and we will hold each other up and try to heal.”

Ercolino was shot to death last Friday on a sidewalk near the Empire State Building by Jeffrey Johnson, a disgruntled former co-worker at a Midtown apparel company.

Johnson, who blamed Ercolino for his firing, was later shot to death by cops, who wound up wounding nine bystanders in the cross fire.

After the funeral, his body was taken to Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale to be interred.

“We will forever be chipped away at and left with a hole, but we are not broken,” Mary said at the church service. “We will honor his life by living as he did: with laughter and with love.”