New York police said a shooting at an apartment in New York City's Harlem district on Friday night killed 22-year-old Constable Jason Rivera and 27-year-old Constable Wilbert Mora was seriously injured. Lashawn J. McNeil, 47, who shot at police with a stolen gun, was also seriously injured when he was shot by a third officer while trying to escape.
A shooting at an apartment in New York City's Harlem district killed 22-year-old constable Jason Rivera on Friday night. (Associated Press photo)
Police officer Wilbert Mora, 27, was seriously injured. (Associated Press photo)
According to the Associated Press, police said the three officers rushed to their apartment on 135th Street on Friday night after receiving a call from a woman who said she needed help with her son McNeil, with whom she had been arguing. Police spoke to the woman and another son but did not mention weapons.
Inspector James Essig said Rivera and Mora walked down the hallway from the front of the apartment when McNeil opened the bedroom door and shot at police, hitting them. When McNeil tried to escape, a third police officer who was in front of the apartment with McNeil's mother shot McNeil, injuring him in the head and arm.
Associated Press photo
Mayor Eric Adams reacted strongly to several days of shootings of police officers in New York City. He said Friday night that it was not an attack on these brave officers, it was an attack on New York City. Adams called on federal authorities to do more to seize stolen guns.
The sacrificial police officer Rivera became a police officer in November 2020, and the badly injured Mora worked in the police station for four years. There was no update on Mora's condition by Saturday morning, and police said he was still hospitalized.
McNeil shot a stolen pistol at the police. (Courtesy of New York Police)
Police said the 45-caliber Glock pistol McNeil used in Friday night's shooting, stolen in Baltimore in 2017, carried a large-capacity magazine that could hold 40 rounds of ammunition.
Essig said McNeil was sentenced to probation in New York City in 2003 for drug offenses. He has also been arrested several times outside the state, including in 1998, when he was arrested in South Carolina on suspicion of illegally carrying a handgun, but records show that the matter was later dismissed. In 2002, he was arrested in Pennsylvania on suspicion of assaulting a police officer.
Compile: LH