Gunman executes 2 NYPD cops as ‘revenge’ for Garner

By Larry Celona, Kevin Fasick, Jamie Schram and Laura Italiano

A suspect was found shot at the scene and rushed to a nearby hospital. Photo: Paul Martinka

Two uniformed NYPD officers were shot dead Saturday afternoon as they sat in their marked police car on a Brooklyn street corner — in what investigators believe was a crazed gunman’s ­assassination-style mission to avenge Eric Garner and Michael Brown.

Ismaaiyl BrinsleyPhoto: Facebook

“It’s an execution,” one law-enforcement source said of the 3 p.m. shooting of police officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.
The tragic heroes were working overtime as part of an anti-terrorism drill in Bedford-Stuyvesant when they were shot point-blank in the head by the lone gunman, identified by sources as Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, who had addresses in Georgia and Brooklyn.
Moments after killing the two officers, he too was dead, having turned the gun on himself on a nearby subway platform as cops closed in.

NYPD officers Wenjian Lu and Rafael RamosPhoto: DCPI (2)

“I’m Putting Wings on Pigs Today,” a person believed to be the gunman wrote on Instagram in a message posted just three hours before the officers were shot.
“They Take 1 Of Ours…Let’s Take 2 of Theirs,” the post continued, signing off with, “This May Be My Final Post.”
He used the hashtag #ShootThePolice, along with two other hashtags referencing Garner and Brown.

Photo: Instagram

The Instagram page included an image of a silver automatic handgun with a wooden handle. Another image showed the same camouflage pants and distinctive blue sneakers worn by the gunman as his body was carried from the scene on a stretcher. Brinsley walked up to the cops’ patrol car at the corner of Myrtle and Tompkins avenues, approaching from the sidewalk.
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Witnesses told police that Brins­ley wordlessly blasted into the patrol car’s front passenger-side window.
Then he stood stock still for a few moments, fleeing into the subway only when he heard the sirens of a second police car.
Once in the subway, “they engaged the guy and he did himself,” one investigator said.
Brinsley was a fugitive who had just murdered his girlfriend in Baltimore Saturday morning, sources told The Post.

Paul Martinka

The two officers were pronounced dead at Woodhull Hospital, where their colleagues and family members huddled tearfully.
City Council President Melissa Mark-Viverito and Mayor Bill de Blasio were less than welcome guests at the poignant gathering.
“We’re all in this together,” the mayor told grieving cops, according to a cop who was there.
“No we’re not,” one officer said tersely in response.
Just last week cops began signing a “Don’t Insult My Sacrifice” waiver, distributed by the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, that warned the mayor and speaker to stay away from funerals of cops killed in the line of duty.
Lieutenants Benevolent Association President Lou Turco, like many cops, likened the murders to the 1988 assassination of Police Officer Eddie Byrne.
The 22-year-old rookie cop was alone in a squad car in Jamaica, Queens, guarding the home of a witness in a drug case, when he was shot in the head five times. The hit was ordered by jailed drug kingpin “Pappy” Mason, in retaliation for his arrest.

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A possible suspect on a stretcher at the scene.Photo: Paul Martinka

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The scene of the shooting.Photo: William Farrington

“I don’t even know how to respond to this,” Turco said. “Twenty-eight years on and I don’t know what to say.”
Another cop, who is black, said he fears that “this is just the beginning.
“There are people out there who will want to be copycats. The tension out there is the worst I’ve ever seen it.”
Both shooting locations — above and below ground — were scenes of blood and terror.
“I heard shooting, — four or five shots,” ear-witness Derrick McKie, 49, told The Post of the cops’ tragic murder.
“It sounded like from a single gun,” he said. Ambulances and police cars — at least one located only a block away — rushed to the scene, he said.
“I seen them putting the cop in the ambulance. He looked messed up,” McKie, a barber, added. “He took a high caliber weapon to the face. He was lifeless…I couldn’t see where the holes was that, all I could see was blood. His body was lifeless.”
Singer and songwriter Uriel Winfree III rushed to his roof when he heard the gunshots nearby.
“There was a cop on the ground everyone was around him,” he recalled.
“They were doing CPR on the cop, then they loaded him in the ambulance and they are hauling ass. Everyone was hauling ass.”
Carmen Jimenez, 32, a social worker from Bed-Stuy, was on the platform when the gunman ran inside, pursued by officers.
“Everything happened so quick,” said Jimenez, who is eight months pregnant.
“We were standing waiting for the G train. We heard arguing from the other end of the platform.
“It looked like two cops came in there was lots of yelling and they said, ‘Everybody get down.’
“We tried to get out of there, and there was a lot of shouting, people were screaming, people were trying to run.
“I threw myself on the floor. I was afraid for my life and afraid for my baby.”
Brinsley has a criminal record dating back to at least 2006, when he was arrested in Georgia for carrying a concealed weapon, a knife, as well as shoplifting, according to online records.
The next year he was nabbed in Dekalb County., Ga., for criminal trespass, and by 2009, he was indicted in Ohio for robbery — a charge that was later apparently dismissed.
In 2011, the shooter was arrested again in Georgia for reckless conduct, tampering with evidence, criminal property damage, and discharging his weapon. The outcome of the case is unknown.
“My deepest thoughts and prayers are with the families of the police officers killed in the line of duty today, Public Advocate Letitia James said in a statement.
“Today, the entire city mourns with the NYPD.”

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Police pay their respect outside the Woodhull Hospital as two Police ambulances carrying bodies of the fallen heroes head to Bellevue Hospital.Photo: Paul Martinka