Police officer shot dead in patrol car while issuing traffic ticket outside police HQ
A black car pulled up behind the police officer before the shooting
A COP has been shot dead in his patrol car while writing up a traffic ticket – right outside police HQ.
Police Chief William McManus of San Antonio, Texas, said Benjamin Marconi, 50, a 20-year veteran of the force, was killed late yesterday morning.
Police said the search for a male suspect was still underway early this morning and that no arrest had been made.
McManus told how the gunman pulled his car up behind the parked police cruiser, got out, walked to the patrol car and shot the detective in the head through the window.
He then reached through the window, fired a second shot into the officer, returned to his vehicle and sped away.
McManus said no motive for the shooting was readily apparent, though he referred to recent ambush killings of police officers in Texas and Louisiana.
"It's always difficult, especially in this this day and age, where police are being targeted across the country," McManus said.
"This is everyone's worst nightmare. You never want to see anything like this happen.
"Unfortunately, like Dallas, like Baton Rouge, it's happened here now."
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Texas Governor Greg Abbott called the slaying of Marconi a "horrific act of violence".
He said in a statement: "Attacks against law enforcement officers will not be tolerated in Texas and must be met with swift justice."
McManus said cops were hunting a man of slim build and dark complexion in his 20s or 30s, possibly with a goatee beard, whose image was captured by security cameras.
The gunman is said to have made his getaway in a black car with tinted windows.
The police chief did not say if authorities thought there was a racial element to the shooting.
But he revealed San Antonio officers were now being ordered to call for backup during traffic stops.
Later on Sunday, in Missouri, a St Louis cop was also shot in the face and critically wounded as he sat in his cruiser at an intersection.
The shootings marked the latest in a string of attacks on law enforcement across the US in recent months.
Days later, a gunman killed three police officers and wounded four others in Louisiana's capital of Baton Rouge.
A total of 57 cops have been shot dead in the US so far this year – a 68 per cent rise on the same period last year.
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