A man shot and killed himself in an apparent suicide on Monday outside the News Corp. office building in Midtown Manhattan, police said.
The 41-year-old man, whose identity was not officially released, shot himself in the chest outside 1211 Sixth Avenue and was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to the New York Police Department.
He carried a suicide note, police said.
The Wall Street Journal and other local media identified the man as Phillip Perea, a former employee of a Fox television station in Austin, Texas.
He had been handing out flyers criticizing Fox, which is owned by News Corp., and left messages on Twitter and a video on YouTube complaining about losing his job, the Journal and other news outlets reported.
A YouTube video apparently narrated by Perea said he was a promotion producer who had been fired due to what he called "managerial bullying and corporate complicity."
Fox Television Stations Chief Executive Jack Abernethy sent an email to employees confirming that a former employee at the Austin station committed suicide outside the company's headquarters in New York.
"He was employed at our Austin television station for ten months and has not been with the station or FTS since June 2014. We are deeply saddened by this tragedy," Abernethy said.
The shooting occurred shortly before 9 a.m., police said.
The incident came just a day after an apparent murder-suicide at a Home Depot store in Manhattan on Sunday afternoon. Both men in that shooting were store employees.
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