A shooting at the Empire State Building in New York City Friday left two dead and at least eight wounded.

One of the dead was the shooter, according to Reuters.

The shooting started at around 9 a.m. on the busy sidewalk on Fifth Avenue outside the Midtown Manhattan building.

It came at the height of the tourist season outside one of New York City's most popular attractions, startling tourists and commuters. Police cordoned off the area around the building, one of the most recognizable in the world.

"I heard the gunshots," said Dahlia Anister, 33, who works at an office near the 102-story Empire State Building. "It was like pop, pop, pop. It was definitely in a bunch."

"People started running, saying somebody has a gun, so I just ran the other way. I was scared," said Adrianne Lapar, 27, who works in the Empire State Building.

The New York Post reported that source said a disgruntled coworker stalked a colleague down a Midtown street, shot him dead and then turned his weapon on random pedestrians outside the Empire State Building - shooting as many as eight others before he was cut down by a cop on foot patrol.

The gunman followed his victim down 33rd Street before opening fire outside Legend's Bar, the sources said.

With his target dead, he then headed over to the Empire State Building and did the unthinkable - unleashing a fusillade of shots in the heart of the morning rush on a street loaded with pedestrians.

One of the victims, a woman from Woodlawn, Bronx, in her 20s, was on her way to Dunkin Donuts for her morning coffee when she heard the gunfire and realized she's been shot.

"She saw blood and said 'Who got shot?' and then she looked down and it was her. She never saw the gunman," said her pal, Chris Collins, a 44-year-old lab tech at NYU.

"I said, 'Erica, is that you?' She was lying on the floor bleeding. She said, 'I don't want to die, I hope I don't die. I don't want to lose my leg.'

Raw video from the Post gave a glimpse into the chaos around the shooting. One man can be seen laying on the floor with spots of blood on him, looking unconscious.

"I saw a guy lying there covered in blood," Sid Dinsay, 38, who works in a PR firm on Fifth Avenue said. "He was in his late 30s. People around him were crying, a police scooter was whizzing by. It was chaos."

According to the Post, some of the victims were shot in the buttocks and legs. They were taken to St. Luke's Hospital and Bellevue Hospital.