NEW YORK: A gunman shot dead two New York City police officers in what officials called an “assassination”, hours after warning on social media that he planned an attack in retribution for recent US police killings of unarmed black men.
Mayor Bill de Blasio yesterday ordered flags flown at half staff around the city. New York City’s main police union harshly criticised the city’s first Democratic mayor in two decades for being insufficiently supportive of the department during recent waves of anti-police violence.
The gunman, 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Abdula Brinsley, travelled from Baltimore, where police said he had shot and wounded his girlfriend, to New York and during the day posted on the social media service Instagram that he would be “putting wings on pigs today,” using an anti-police slur.
The two New York City Police Department officers, Rafael Ramos, 40, and Wenjian Liu, 32, had no time to react when Brinsley appeared next to their vehicle, and shot both officers with a silver semi-automatic handgun, said NYPD Police Commissioner William Bratton. Baltimore police said they learned of the suspect’s posts on Saturday afternoon and called NYPD officials to alert them. Reuters
