A gunman has shot dead Liu Wenjin and Raphael Ramos, two police officers sitting inside a patrol car in New York before killing himself in a subway station.
The officers were on duty in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn when they were shot on Saturday.
Bill Bratton, commissioner of the New York police department, said the officers had been shot with “no warning, no provocation, they were quite simply assassinated.”
The killer’s name was given as Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28.
The gunman was a black man while the two police officers were Asian and Hispanic, police said.
Earlier he had shot and injured his ex-girlfriend and had posted anti-police messages on social media.
Reacting to this, President Barack Obama condemned the killings. “Officers who serve and protect our communities risk their own safety for ours every single day and they deserve our respect and gratitude every single day,” Obama said.
Bill de Blasio, Mayor of New York, said, “Anyone who saw postings indicating a threat to the police should report them to the authorities.”
The last fatal shooting of a New York police officer was in 2011.
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