2nd New York cop shot inside precinct following 'ambush' attack on patrol van, police say
Police are searching for the suspect in Saturday evening's attack on two uniformed police officers in their patrol van. (New York City Police Department)
NEW YORK - A gunman opened fire inside a New York City police precinct Sunday morning, striking a police officer in the arm just hours after another police officer was shot and injured in his patrol car in what officials called an attempted assassination.
The second officer was shot just before 8 a.m. inside the headquarters of the 41st Precinct in the Bronx and was currently in stable condition at Lincoln Hospital, NYPD spokesperson Hubert Reyes said. A suspect was in custody.
NYPD OFFICER SHOT, WOUNDED IN 'ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT'
Reyes said it is unclear if Sunday's shooting is related to Saturday evening's "ambush" on a patrol van in the same area.
A man approached the uniformed officers' van just before 8:30 p.m. Saturday and asked for directions when he brandished a gun "without provocation," Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said. Neither officer returned fire.
The officer at the wheel of the van was grazed in the chin and neck, but he avoided serious injury. The officer was expected to released from the hospital Sunday.
No arrests were immediately made as police launched a manhunt for the gunman.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo tweeted shortly after the shooting Sunday morning that he was “horrified” by the apparent back-to-back attacks on the city's law enforcement officers.
"Horrified by the multiple attacks on @NYPD officers in the Bronx," Cuomo wrote. "NY's law enforcement officers put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe. These attacks are heinous. Those responsible will be brought to justice & held accountable to the fullest extent of the law."
Hours earlier, Shea had recalled other unprovoked assaults on police officers sitting in their patrol vehicles.
In 2017, a gunman killed Officer Miosotis Familia as she sat in her patrol vehicle in the Bronx. In 2014, two officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, were shot dead in their patrol car in Brooklyn by a man upset about recent police killings of unarmed black men. Shea said Ramos and Liu's deaths were “not something that engenders anything but the worst memories.”
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