Friend recalls moment Indiana tourist was shot dead with ‘no warning’ in NYC

The Brooklyn gunfire that killed a young tourist from Indiana this weekend came out of nowhere, a witness told The Post on Sunday.

Ethan Williams, 20, was sitting with four of his friends on a stoop outside their Bushwick Airbnb around 2:30 a.m. Saturday when shots broke out across the street and struck him in the chest with “no warning,” his pal Jacob Mayhew told The Post on Sunday.

“Some guy next to that mailbox just started shooting!” he said.

The group of about eight young men had come into town on Friday and planned to stay for a week to film skateboarding videos.

But on Sunday, Mayhew had returned to the rented apartment on Eldert Street to give the keys back to the landlady.

“None of us had any idea” why the group was shot at, Mayhew said, adding they had “no problems” with anyone in the neighborhood.

“We were here less than 24 hours, we weren’t in town long enough to talk to anyone,” he said.

Police believe Williams was an unintended victim of gunfire that came at the group from more than 200 feet away.

The shooter, who was wearing a black hoodie, dropped his gun at the scene, law enforcement sources previously told The Post.

A first-floor resident of the building where the young men were staying — who wouldn’t confirm she had lent out the Airbnb, but flashed Mayhew’s rental agreement to The Post — said she watched the tragedy unfold on a security camera.

“I hear five shots and I say to my husband, ‘Those are gunshots!’ He say they’re firecrackers. I say no and I look,” she recalled.

“I saw them sitting and then scatter around … After, they all was in shock.”

Williams, a sophomore at Indiana University, was rushed to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

The woman said Williams and his friends “knew no one” in the area.

“I feel sorry for the family,” the woman said. “I hope they catch the perpetrators. I’m sorry it happened.”

The slain student’s father, Jason Williams, previously told The Post that Ethan was on his “dream trip” to the Big Apple, having fallen in love with the city after watching “Spider-Man” as a toddler.

The film and media student was remembered as someone who always stood up for others and “wanted to make the world a better place.”

“It’s hard to express how much he loved everybody,” his devastated dad said. “He did not know a stranger.”

The young man’s best friend of 11 years, Blaine Cromley, told The Post through tears how “loving” Ethan was — and how he’d wanted to work toward “ending violence.”

The two of them had planned on moving to NYC after graduation, Cromley added.

“He was going to do something with his life. He was so special,” Cromley said. “I looked up to him. All my friends looked up to him. He was the rock of my life.”