Three U.S. officers shot in ‘targeted’ attacks
First shooting in San Antonio left a 20-year veteran dead
Three police officers in three different states were shot in apparently unprovoked attacks in a 12-hour period Sunday, attacks described as “targeted” and “ambush”-style by officials.
A fourth was shot in a Kansas City, Mo., suburb, but the circumstances were unclear Monday morning.
The first and only fatal shooting took place just before noon in San Antonio, Texas, directly outside the police station, as a 20-year veteran of the police department issued a traffic ticket from inside his patrol car. The assailant, seemingly unconnected to the original motorist, shot the officer twice in the head before fleeing in a black car. Later Monday, San Antonio police Chief William McManus said 31-year-old Otis Tyrone McKane was arrested and charged with capital murder in the slaying of police Det. Benjamin Marconi.
He was arrested in a car driven by a woman on Interstate 10 at Farm-toMarket Rd.1516 on the eastern fringe of San Antonio.
The second shooting was reported at about 7:30 Sunday evening in St. Louis, Mo. A 46-year-old officer was sitting in traffic in his patrol car when another car pulled up alongside him. Someone inside shot the officer twice in the face then fled. The 19-year-old suspect was later shot and killed by police when authorities say he fired at officers searching for him. The officer who was shot in the face is expected to survive.
At 8 p.m., the third ambush-style shooting shocked the small coastal Florida town of Sanibel, where for the first time in the city’s history, an officer was shot in the line of duty. Like the attack in San Antonio, the Florida officer was sitting in his car after a “routine traffic stop” when, according to the News-Press, a “drive-by shooter” opened fire. The injured officer was treated and released from a hospital, officials said, and the suspect was arrested after a shootout with police.
An officer with the Gladstone Police Department was shot later Sunday night near Kansas City, reported the Kansas City Star. According to WIST, the shooting began with a traffic stop, after which the suspect, a passenger, ran from the vehicle and struggled with police when they caught up with him. During the struggle, police say the man pulled a handgun, wounding an officer before being killed in an exchange of fire. He was not named, but identified as a white male in his late teens.
Sunday’s targeted shootings are the most recent in a string of similar attacks that have made headlines this year, beginning with the ambush-style killings of five Dallas police officers in July.