At the start of her midnight shift on Wednesday, New York City Police Department (NYPD) Officer Miosotis Familia was in a mobile command post, writing in her notebook, when a gunman strode toward her.
She never saw Alexander Bonds coming before he shot her in the head through the passenger-side window, killing her before officers ultimately killed him, police said.
Police are investigating what might have prompted the shooting, which New York City Police Commissioner James O’Neill described as an officer being “assassinated in an unprovoked attack on cops.”
A 12-year NYPD veteran, 48-year-old Familia had entered police work later in life than most on a force where the average recruit is 26.
She had been a nurse and medical assistant first, according to her profile on career Web site LinkedIn.
A mother of three who lived with her own mother in the Bronx, she felt a calling to help her community, friends said.
Familia worked her entire police career in the Bronx precinct where she was killed while staffing the recreational vehicle-like command post, stationed to help combat rising crime in the neighborhood after a triple shooting in March.
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the shooting “the latest in a troubling series of attacks on police officers over the past two years.”
Bonds, also known as John Bonds, had a violent history and had vented his anger about police in a Facebook video in September last year. Rambling that law officers got away with killing and abusing people, he warned them to leave him alone or “we gonna do something.”
“I’m not playing, Mr Officer. I don’t care about 100 police watching this,” the 34-year-old says in the video posted on Facebook.
“It’s time for people to wisen up,” he added.
He had been released in 2013 after being sentenced to eight years in prison for a 2005 armed robbery in Syracuse, New York. He had other arrests, including one in 2001, when as a teenager he was accused of attacking an officer with brass knuckles.
While he railed in his video about how inmates are treated behind bars, prison records show he had been written up more than two dozen times for disciplinary reasons — mostly for relatively minor infractions, but sometimes for top-level violations such as assaulting an inmate or fighting.
Bonds was caught on video leaving a convenience store, then moving tightly along the wall, pulling a hoodie over his head and walking purposefully toward the command post vehicle with gloved hands, police said.
The video did not capture the shooting itself, but showed him running away with a gun in his hand, police said.
Familia’s partner frantically radioed for help, and officers caught up with Bonds about a block away and killed him in a hail of about 20 bullets when he pulled a stolen revolver, police said.
He did not get off a shot, authorities said.
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