Empire State Building shooting victim Steven Ercolino and girlfriend Ivette Rivera 'always wanted to get married'

A cousin of Ercolino said Rivera was 'the love of his life.' Rivera's brother said 'everything they did, they did together as a couple.'

They were soulmates from the start.

Steven Ercolino knew instantly that Bronx-born beauty Ivette Rivera was the one who would share his life, walk down the aisle with him, grow old beside him.

"They always wanted to get married," his brother Paul said wistfully Saturday at the family home in Warwick, Orange County. "He didn't have a ring, I don't think."

Wedding plans were replaced with funeral arrangements as the two families mourned the brutal loss of Ercolino, 41, killed by five gunshots from a grudge-nursing former co-worker.

One day after the murder, Steve's father, Francis, identified his son's bullet-riddled body in Manhattan while Rivera, 38, faced life without her slain boyfriend after a sad and sleepless night.

"Everything they did, they did together as a couple," said her brother Marcos Rivera. "He definitely was a good person. . . . She said he was her baby, that's what she used to say. He made her happy.

A doctor prescribed Valium to help her relax as Rivera avoided all newspaper and television coverage of the vicious slaying alongside the Empire State Building.

"It's going to bring back too many memories and too much pain," said Marcos Rivera, 41.

Ercolino, one of four siblings, was introduced to his dark-haired love eight years ago by her mother, who met her daughter's future beau through work.

Sparks quickly flew, and the buff sales executive soon charmed the Manhattan law firm worker and her family.

"She was the love of his life," said Anne Flugmacher, 56, an Ercolino cousin. "I met her, and they were very good together."

The couple moved in together four years ago at Ercolino's Hoboken, N.J., condo, and recently vacationed in Cancun, Mexico. Last fall, the pair celebrated Thanksgiving with the Ercolino clan; one year earlier, they dined with the Riveras.

"He was a great guy," said Marcos Rivera. "A real good guy from the time I've know him."

Rivera was headed Saturday to Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Center to break the grim news to his mother, who is recovering from lung surgery.

A sister was flying up from Florida to comfort Ivette, the baby of the family. An autopsy indicated Ercolino was shot five times in the head, and witnesses described killer Jeffrey Johnson standing over the bleeding victim and firing shot after shot.

As the two families struggled in the aftermath of the shooting, the iconic 102-story skyscraper was open Saturday for business — but something still seemed a bit off.

"Some of my co-workers are shaken up," said Nykiem Green, who works inside the building at NYSkyride.

"Three co-workers quit. . . . A lot of tourists have asked me, 'How is it inside the building? Where were you when it happened?'"

Business was down from a typical summer Saturday, he said, on the morning after two people died and nine were wounded outside the Art Deco skyscraper.

Tourist Sue Bryant, up from Florida, didn't hesitate to visit the building Saturday.

"I would have been more scared if it had been a random shooting like the one in Aurora, Colo.," said Bryant, 56. "But this was a specific case of a guy being angry at someone.

"I'm not worried," she continued. "No one's mad at me."

A record 50 million visitors came to the city in 2011, with the mayor's office projecting tourism will add 30,000 new jobs and $45 million to the city economy by 2015.

Johnson was shot seven times and killed by police within minutes of executing his helpless victim on W. 33rd St. The loner's body was unclaimed Saturday in the city morgue.

Cops gunned down Johnson after he pointed a .45-caliber handgun at them — but he never fired a single round at the two officers just outside the building's Fifth Ave. entrance.

Six of the nine wounded bystanders in the chaotic shooting were struck by ricocheting bullet fragments as cops fired 16 shots at the cold-blooded killer in a gray suit.

Three other victims were hit by bullets Friday morning, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Saturday.

While Johnson, 53, never fired at the officers, there was no indication that the gun jammed, Kelly said. His weapon still held one bullet, and Johnson carried extra ammunition in his briefcase.

Ercolino was just a few steps from the W. 33rd St. business where they had both once worked when he was gunned down.

He was vice president of sales at Hazan Imports. Johnson was fired from the company last year.

The duo had a longstanding feud, with Johnson — a designer with Hazan — blaming Ercolino for the failure of his T-shirt line.

Johnson, 53, who lived on the upper East Side, served as a U.S. Coast Guard petty officer second-class during the 1970s, Kelly said. The killer later lived in Sarasota, Fla., from 1983-92, and bought the murder weapon there in 1991.

According to Kelly, two of the wounded civilians remained in Bellevue Hospital while a third was at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

All three were listed Saturday in stable condition, the commissioner said.

The fatal shooting of Johnson will go before a Manhattan grand jury, although the NYPD already declared the two officers had no choice given the circumstances.

Officers Craig Matthews, 39, and Robert Sinishtaj, 40, are both 15-year NYPD veterans.