Bronx NYPD shootings: Gunman targets police in back-to-back attacks, authorities say

NEW YORK —  A gunman walked into a police station in the Bronx and started shooting early Sunday, authorities say, wounding an officer just hours after he shot a different officer in a patrol van.

The same gunman was responsible for the back-to-back shootings, New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said Sunday at a news conference.

“For the second time in less than 12 hours,” Shea said, “NYPD officers have been targeted specifically.”

Shea said the gunman walked into the headquarters of the 41st police precinct shortly before 8 a.m., firing off bullets. A male officer was shot once in the upper left arm. That officer returned fire but did not hit the suspect.

Shea, who described the suspect as a “coward,” said the gunman lay down once he ran out of bullets. The suspect, whose name has not been released, was taken into custody.

He had a lengthy rap sheet and was paroled from prison in 2017 after a conviction for attempted murder, Shea said.

“This is not a crime gone bad. This is not a liquor store robbery interrupted that a tragedy erupts from,” the commissioner said. “This is a premeditated assassination attempt.”

The shooting inside the precinct headquarters came just hours after another attack in the same section of the Bronx, involving the same suspect.

Two officers narrowly escaped with their lives when a gunman fired into their patrol van just before 8:30 p.m Saturday.

The officer at the wheel of the van was grazed in the chin and neck but avoided serious injury. He was expected to be released from the hospital Sunday. Commissioner Shea said the attack “should outrage all New Yorkers.”

The attacks 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.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a tweet Sunday he was “horrified by the multiple attacks” on police.

“NY’s law enforcement officers put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe. These attacks are heinous,” Cuomo wrote.

Mayor Bill de Blasio condemned the back-to-back attacks.

“This was an attempt to assassinate police officers. We need to use that word,” De Blasio said at the Sunday news conference.

President Trump immediately used the shootings to assail New York’s Democratic mayor and governor.

In Sunday’s ambush in their police vehicle, two uniformed officers — partners for eight years and friends since middle school — were sitting with their van’s emergency lights activated when a man approached them and engaged them in conversation, Shea said.

The man asked the officers for directions, then pulled out a gun “without provocation,” the commissioner said. The man fired multiple shots, striking the officer behind the wheel. Shea said the officer’s carotid artery narrowly avoided injury.

Neither officer returned fire. The officer’s partner drove him to a hospital nearby. Shea called both officers “heroic” for their composure and said their long association made for “an amazing story.”

Security video that appeared to capture Saturday night’s shooting showed the van driving quickly away as a man appeared to point something at the fleeing vehicle.

The officers had been stationed in the neighborhood because of recent drug activity and violence, Shea said.