© GoogleThe 71-year-old man turned a shotgun on himself, ending his own life as a city marshal knocked on his door to evict him from his Murray Hill apartment at 305 E. 40 St. on Tuesday, police sources said.
NYC Marshal George Essock Jr. knocked on the apartment door at 305 E. 40 St. and the tenant asked him through the door to give him a few minutes to get dressed around 11:30 a.m., a spokesman for NYC Marshals said.
"(The marshal) said a few minutes later there was a loud noise. He didn't know what it was," said Michael Woloz, a spokesman for the City Marshals.
When Essock drilled through the door he found the man in the bedroom with a gunshot wound to his head, the spokesman said.
Essock called police, but the tenant could not be saved.
Woloz said the visit was the first eviction attempt at the address.
"Everything was done as it should have been," he said. "This is not the first time something like this has happened...Given the volume they deal with, the laws of chance sometimes catch up with them."
Marshals in the city work as private contractors, but are regulated by the Department of Investigation.
They primarily serve court ordered evictions. Details of why the tenant was being evicted were not immediately available.
Woloz said marshals are trained to deal with the fragility of the situation.
"The marshal is entering this person's life at a challenging time. It's not a pleasant call," Woloz said. "These guys are professional and they're very sensitive to the fact that it's a very sensitive time to the recipient. You have to do it humanely, with the understanding that there's a person on the other side of that door."
Essock could not immediately be reached for comment.
In 2001, City Marshal Erskine Bryce, 66, was killed after he was set on fire while serving eviction papers in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
The killing was the first NYC Marshal line-of-duty death since 1984.
Police were investigating the apparent suicide late Tuesday.
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