NEW YORK — A federal airport security worker was shot to death in New York while on the phone with his sister, who said she heard the gunshots that took her brother’s life.

Donovan Davy, 45, was killed shortly after midnight Sunday a few blocks from his family’s Brooklyn apartment, police said. Pashona Davy told news stations that her brother had just picked up a takeout meal at a restaurant and cash at an ATM.

He was taking a bit longer than expected to return, so she called him. She said he told her he was “walking like a madman” to get back.

Before she could find out what he meant, she heard three or four gunshots.

“I’m saying ‘Donovan, Donovan, Donovan!’ And my heart gets lower and lower,” she said.

Before long, she heard sirens and ran out to find her brother on the ground, with authorities trying to resuscitate him, she said.

Police said Donovan Davy was wounded in the neck and leg and was pronounced dead at a hospital.

News stations aired surveillance video that shows a man, apparently Davy, walking along a street when another person approaches him from behind. He falls to the ground, and the other person runs off.

Davy worked for the Transportation Security Administration at John F. Kennedy International Airport for about 17 years. John Bambury, the agency’s federal security director for JFK, said Davy was “a longtime valued employee taken from us far too soon in another senseless act of gun violence.”

Pashona Davy said her brother had helped guide her when she was young, and more recently helped her get through a difficult pregnancy.

“Donovan was a remarkable person” who spoke multiple languages, she said. “He was cool. He was funny, very intellectual.”