As Lennon walked past him, Chapman called out "Mr. Lennon." As Lennon turned, Chapman crouched into what witnesses called a "combat" stance and fired five hollowpoint bullets. One bullet missed, but four bullets entered John's back and shoulder. One of the four bullets fatally pierced his aorta. Still, Lennon managed to stagger up six steps into the concierge booth where he collapsed, gasping "I'm shot, I'm shot."
Chapman stood there, holding his .38 Charter Arms revolver, which was pulled out of his hands and kicked away by Jose Perdomo who then asked "What have you done, what have you done?", to which Chapman replied "I just shot John Lennon." Chapman then calmly took his coat off, placed it at his feet, took out a a copy of J.D. Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye, and started reading.
Police arrived within minutes, to find Chapman still waiting quietly outside, still reading the book.
Fans have been gathering at the Strawberry Fields Memorial in New York's Central Park, and the BBC is marking the anniversary with a huge, cross-station event, with archive audio of Lennon from interviews, including an interview with the late John Peel. If you delve into the BBC site, it has a huge wealth of Lennon material, including the news report (text and video) from the day Lennon was shot from the On This Day subsite. Not forgetting the radio stations, BBC 6 Music is marking the day with an entire minisite, Lennon Remembered, Radio 1 has the archived audio from their Lennon Special One World show (a special show, featuring bands from all over the world covering songs from The White Album), and Radio 2 has its own Lennon Remembered minisite as well. All the links are strongly recommended, and check out the audio from the radio shows as some of them (especially the One World show, for example) won't be available on the web past this week, unless they specifically archive it... Which I hope they will.