A veteran emergency medical worker died Thursday afternoon after being stabbed outside an EMS station in Queens, police said.

The victim was identified as 61-year-old Lieutenant Alison Russo-Elling, a 25-year veteran. She was “stabbed multiple times in a barbaric and completely unprovoked attack,” Acting Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh said during a news conference at Mount Sinai Queens hospital on Thursday evening. Russo-Elling’s death marks the first on-duty death of an EMT in five years, an FDNY official confirmed.

NYPD Chief James Essig said the attack occurred at 2:15 p.m. outside an Astoria EMS station on the corner of 20th Avenue and 41st Street. Russo-Elling had walked a half block away from the station when she was approached by a man wielding a knife and stabbed numerous times across her body, authorities said.

Russo-Elling, a Long Island resident, was getting food while wearing her uniform at the time, according to police. Following the attack, she was transported to Mount Sinai Queens, where she was pronounced dead.