New York: A gunman who had posted anti-police statements on social media ambushed and fatally shot two New York police officers as they sat in their squad car on Saturday and then killed himself, police said.
The officers were killed without warning in their marked police car as they were on duty in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, Police Commissioner William Bratton told a news conference flanked by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
"Although we're still learning the details, it's clear that this was an assassination, that these officers were shot execution style," de Blasio said.
New York police have come under intense pressure in recent weeks, with protests erupting after a grand jury declined earlier this month to charge a white police officer involved in the chokehold death of an unarmed black man, Eric Garner, during an arrest attempt in the borough of Staten Island.
Quoting a law enforcement source, NBC's New York affiliate reported that the gunman may have been seeking retribution against police after posting a threatening message on a social media account.
Bratton identified the slain officers as Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.
Bratton named the gunman as Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, and said he took a shooter's stance on the passenger side of the squad car, opening fire with a silver semi-automatic handgun.
He then fled into a nearby subway station and died there from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, Bratton said.
Brinsley had shot and seriously wounded his girlfriend in Baltimore County, Maryland, early on Saturday before traveling to Brooklyn, where he had connections, the police commissioner said.
Bratton said there was no indication that the killings were linked to terrorism.
The news conference was held at Brooklyn's Woodhull Medical Center, where the police officers were taken.
Police set up a perimeter for several blocks around the street corner where the shooting occurred. Only residents were allowed to cross the police line and the subway line where the gunman shot himself was shut down.
The grand jury's decision on the officer involved in Garner's death sparked protests in New York and elsewhere. It followed widespread demonstrations in the United States over a grand jury decision last month not to indict a white police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri.
The protests have continued sporadically. On Saturday demonstrators against police violence shut down part of the Mall of America in Minnesota on Saturday, one of the country's largest shopping centers, a community group said.
Mike Isaac, a local resident, told CNN that Saturday's shooting in Brooklyn took place in a largely African-American neighborhood that had been tense since the protests over Garner's death.
"The mood is pretty freaked out," he said.
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