NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City police officer was shot and killed Monday during a traffic stop, the city’s mayor said. It marked the first slaying of an NYPD officer in two years.
“We lost one of our sons today and it is extremely painful. It is extremely painful,” Mayor Eric Adams said, addressing reporters at a hospital in Queens.
The shooting happened just before 5:50 p.m. in the Far Rockaway section of Queens, police said. Officer Jonathan Diller and his partner were part of the NYPD Community Response Team and were conducting a traffic stop at the time.
As they approached the vehicle, the suspect pointed a gun toward the officers and shot Diller beneath his bullet-proof vest, said Police Commissioner Edward Caban, who identified the slain officer on X, formerly known as Twitter. He said Diller’s partner returned fire and shot one of the people in the vehicle, who was taken to an area hospital.
Diller was taken to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center but could not be saved, officials said. A three-year veteran of the police department, he was married with a young child, Caban said.
“We struggle to find the words to express the tragedy of losing one of our own,” Caban said on X.
The police department’s chief of detectives, Joseph Kenny, said the two officers had initially initiated contact with the driver and his passenger because he was parked at a bus stop illegally. “He was asked to leave the car. He was given a lawful order numerous times to step out of the car. He refused. And when the officers took him out of the car, rather than stepping out of the car, he shot our officer.”
Witnesses described a chaotic scene.
“It happened so fast,” one bystander, Melissa Morgan, 39, told the Daily News.