Police defend response to immigrant centre massacre.

A faster response by police to the attack at an immigrant services centre in the United States would not have saved any lives, a county prosecutor said.

The shooting at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, New York, stopped shortly after the first emergency calls came in at 10.30am, but police did not enter the building until nearly 45 minutes later.

Survivors reported huddling for hours in a basement, not knowing whether they were still in danger after the gunman, 41-year-old Jiverly Wong, a Vietnamese immigrant, killed 13 people on Friday.

Medical examiners who conducted autopsies on the victims reported that their injuries were so severe they would not have survived, he said.

“Nobody could have been saved if the police walked in the door that first minute,” said Broome County district attorney Gerald Mollen.

The prosecutor spoke yesterday as officials prepared to release a list of names and home countries of the victims.

Four Chinese people were among those killed, and a Chinese student was also shot in the arm and leg but survived, officials said. The other victims came from Haiti (two), Pakistan (one), the Philippines (one), Iraq (one), Brazil (one), Vietnam (two, including the gunman) and the United States (two).

The first emergency calls came in at 10.30am, police chief Joseph Zikuski told a news conference. The callers spoke broken English and it took dispatchers two minutes to sort out what was happening, he said.

The first patrol cars arrived at 10.33.

Officers were on the scene five minutes before a wounded receptionist called police to report a gunman in the building, Mr Zikuski said. Police had earlier said it was that call that brought them to the immigration centre.

A police commando team entered the building 43 minutes after they received their first call.

When police got there, the gunfire had stopped, so they believed there was no “active gunman” in the centre and decided to wait for the commando team to arrive, Mr Zikuski said.

He compared the scene to the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Colorado, in which 15 people died, including the two teenage gunmen.

“At Columbine, there were numerous shots ringing out and law enforcement stood by,” he said. “I was quite frankly horrified when I knew that.”

Mr Zikuski said his officers would have gone into the building if shots had still been flying.

“If you arrive on the scene – the first two to four guys – and there’s an active shooter, they enter,” he said.

Pressed on why police did not go into building, Mr Zikuski said information they were getting from the receptionist was still uncertain enough to warrant caution.

“He was dead. We didn’t know it,” Mr Zikuski said. “If there’s a bunch of cops laying on the floor shot trying to rescue somebody else, it’s not going to help anybody.”

Wong was “an avid gunman” who had recently visited a firing range weekly, Mr Zikuski said, but authorities still do not know his motive.

Officials have said Wong was apparently upset about losing his job at a vacuum cleaner plant and about people picking on him for his limited English.

Police and Wong’s acquaintances portrayed him as an angry, troubled man who struggled with drugs and job loss and perhaps blamed his adopted country for his troubles.

Until last month, he had been taking classes at the Civic Association, which teaches English to immigrants and helps them prepare for citizenship tests.

Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi spoke by telephone yesterday with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the incident, China’s official Xinhua news agency said.

“This was a very serious incident and the Chinese government is deeply concerned about it,” said Mr Yang.

“We grieve over the death of the Chinese nationals and other victims, and our condolences go to the injured people as well as the victims’ families.”