New York: A gunman ambushed and fatally shot two New York City police officers on Saturday and then killed himself, police said, and a social media post indicated it may have been in revenge for the police chokehold death of an unarmed black man.
If the killings do turn out to have been motivated by the death of Eric Garner, they could inflame tension over race and law enforcement that have dogged New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, sparked protests around the country and drawn in President Barack Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder.
The officers were killed without warning and at close range as they sat in their squad car in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, Police Commissioner William Bratton told a news conference, flanked by de Blasio.
"Although we're still learning the details, it's clear that this was an assassination, that these officers were shot execution style," said de Blasio.
Instagram posting
An online posting suggested a link between Brinsley, who was black, and anger over the death of Garner.
Screenshots taken by various media showed an Instagram account attributed to Brinsley with a picture of a man with wire-rimmed glasses and a separate picture of a silver pistol.
This picture provided by New York Police Department shows the suspect's gun. Police named the shooter as 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who shot and seriously wounded his ex-girlfriend in Baltimore early Saturday before driving to Brooklyn to murder the two police officers.
The account, using the slang insult pig for police, said: "I'm Putting Wings On Pigs Today. They Take 1 Of Ours ... Let's Take 2 of Theirs." The post included hashtags for Eric Garner and for Michael Brown, the teenager who was shot dead in August in Ferguson.
Instagram said the account attributed to Brinsley had been deleted.
New York police have come under intense pressure in recent weeks. Protests erupted after a grand jury declined this month to charge a white police officer involved in Garner's chokehold death during an arrest attempt in July in Staten Island borough.
Bratton identified the gunman in Saturday's shooting 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.
The police chief identified the slain officers as Rafael Ramos, 40, and Wenjian Liu, 32. Liu had been married for two months. Ramos had a 13-year-old son.
The killings were the first time New York City police officers have been killed by gunfire since 2011 and sparked bitter anger among some police against de Blasio, who they see as not supportive enough in the face of public anger. The mayor has had a prickly relationship with law enforcement as he tries to balance regard for civil liberties with police concerns.
Newly sprayed graffiti are seen on a storefront on the Lower East Side in New York condemns the killing of two police officers in the city earlier in the day.
Patrick Lynch, head of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association that is the country's largest municipal police union, said, "There's blood on many hands tonight." "Those that incited violence on the street under the guise of protest, that tried to tear down what New York City police officers did every day," Lynch told a news conference. "That blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall in the office of the mayor."
Demonstrations over Garner's death came on top of protests around the country over another grand jury's decision in November not to indict a white police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri.
Bratton was asked whether there was a link between Brinsley and the weeks of protests over law enforcement, and said this was under investigation.
He added: "There has been ... a very strong anti-police, anti-criminal justice system, anti-societal set of initiatives under way and one of the unfortunate aspects sometimes is some people get caught up in these and go in directions they should not."
He said police would investigate whether Brinsley had been part of protests in New York and in Atlanta, his last place of residence, over the Brown and Garner killings.
Brinsley had shot and seriously wounded his ex-girlfriend in Baltimore County, Maryland, early on Saturday before traveling to Brooklyn, where he had connections, Bratton said.
As ambulances carrying the officers' bodies left Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn, police and firefighters blocked traffic along the motorcade route with squad cars and fire trucks.
Hundreds of police and firefighters stood silently at attention, saluting as the ambulances drove by on their way to the city medical examiner's office.
