A storied New York Hilton adds a grim chapter to its history

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Pictures of the alleged shooter have been shared by New York Police.

That someone would turn out to be Thompson, a head of one of the nation’s largest health insurers, and one of the scheduled speakers at the event, the UnitedHealth Group’s Investor Conference 2024. As attendees gathered, news crews were massing on the street below, police were searching for the hooded shooter, and, at Mt Sinai West, a hospital just uptown, Thompson, 50, was dead after sustaining gunshot wounds.

As the news spread, the conference was called off; attendees pulled off their lanyards and headed for the exits, carry-on luggage in tow.

Mark Sanders, the general manager of the New York Hilton Midtown, said in an email that the hotel staff was shaken by the crime. “We are deeply saddened by this morning’s events in the area and our thoughts are with all affected by the tragedy,” he said.

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Police cover evidence with paper cups as as CEO of UnitedHealthcare Brian Thompson, was shot as he entered the New York Hilton. Photo / Bryan R. Smith, AFP

But at the hotel, by necessity, life paused, then went on. A hotel is meant to be calm – this one in particular perhaps, serving if not as an oasis, then a carpeted pocket of quiet against the volume of midtown Manhattan, with its coffee carts and taxicabs, its sidewalks jammed with tourists and men and women walking, head down, in suits. The hotel staff, in the heavily trafficked lobby, projects an aura of having seen it all, and having looked away.

Though yellow police tape closed off a section of West 54th St just outside a side entrance, hotel guests continued traipsing in and out the main entrance Wednesday morning. Natasha Reyes, a cashier at the gift shop, said that she had arrived about an hour before the shooting, and never heard anything at all.

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This is probably how it was when other major events were happening around the hotel. When, for example, Presley, in a baby-blue suit, was giving an interview in a ballroom. Or when Neil Sheehan and his colleagues from The New York Times booked several rooms to compile the story on the leaked government report that would roil the nation with its revelations about the Vietnam War.

Hotels are meant to absorb whatever happens. If there is conflict or even tragedy, they are just the backdrop.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Annie Correal and Claire Fahy