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Maghfoor Mansoor's crime spree ended in a hail of bullets in midtown Manhattan Friday.
The 35-year-old Pakistani fugitive, who was recently featured on the hit television show America's Most Wanted, was killed in a chaotic firefight with law enforcement officers in the lobby of the Hampshire Hotel and Suites in Times Square.
According to Assistant Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Barry Mawn, the former Las Vegas cab driver was shot twice in the stomach in a gun-battle with a team of police detectives, FBI agents and US marshals. He was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Three officers were also injured in the shootout, but their injuries were not life-threatening, Mawn said.
Mansoor had evaded authorities for past three years. The charges against him included kidnapping, sexual assault, murder, robbery, and battery on a police officer.
But his first brush with the law in the US was in March 1996, when he was arrested for groping a 17-year-old woman in the lobby of the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. He was sentenced to 6 months in prison for misdemeanor assault.
In 1998, Mansoor was arrested again for the rape of another 17-year-old Las Vegas woman at gunpoint. However, the case was dropped after the victim disappeared under suspicious circumstances.
On December 15, 2000, Mansoor abducted another woman in Colorado and again sexually assaulted her at gunpoint, police say. But before a warrant could be issued for his arrest, he fled.
He next resurfaced in January 9, 2001, at the New Orleans International Airport. According to police, he punched an undercover detective in the face when he was stopped and questioned and ran to a parking lot, where he hijacked a car.
In the high-speed police chase which followed, Mansoor struck and killed a road construction worker and then escaped on foot.
In April, the FBI featured him on their fugitive Web site and the TV show America's Most Wanted profiled his crime spree.
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