U.S. President Barack Obama denounced the close-range shooting deaths of two New York City police officers in an ambush earlier threatened in an online posting.
“I unconditionally condemn today’s murder of two police officers in New York City,” Obama said in a statement yesterday from Hawaii, where he is spending the Christmas holiday with his family. “Two brave men won’t be going home to their loved ones tonight, and for that, there is no justification.”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, in a press conference last night, called the execution-style killings of Officers Rafael Ramos, 40, and Wenjian Liu, 32, a “despicable act.” Police CommissionerWilliam Bratton said the officers were “quite simply, assassinated.”
Ramos and Liu were sitting in their vehicle near Myrtle and Tompkins avenues in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn when Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, walked up from behind, took a shooting stance and opened fire on the passenger side at about 2:47 p.m., Bratton said.
“They may never actually have seen their assailant,” he said. The officers were taken to the Woodhull Medical Center, where De Blasio and Bratton held last night’s press conference.
Bratton described how Brinsley earlier in the day shot his ex-girlfriend in the Baltimore area before writing “very anti-police” postings on social media. At approximately 2:45 p.m., Baltimore authorities sent a warning flier. “Tragically, this was essentially at the same time that our officers were being ambushed and murdered by Brinsley,” he said.
The assailant fled into a subway station, where he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head on the platform, Bratton said.
De Blasio said New York “is in mourning.” “Our hearts are heavy,” he added.
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