Two law enforcement officers were fatally shot while looking for a driver who fled a traffic stop in upstate New York. The shooter was killed in an exchange of gunfire with police, reports the Associated Press. The shootout took place shortly after 8 p.m. Sunday outside a house in the residential neighborhood of Liverpool, 6 miles north of Syracuse, claiming the lives of Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Michael Hoosock and Syracuse police officer Michael Jensen. The slain shooter was identified as Christopher Murphy, 33.
Jensen had attempted to pull over a car, but the driver refused to stop and sped off, said Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick. Police officers tracked the license plate to the address in nearby Liverpool, requesting assistance from the sheriff’s office. Officers were inspecting the vehicle and moving around the house they heard what sounded like “a gun being manipulated,” so they took cover, said Syracuse Police Chief Joseph Cecile Inside the house, Murphy told a friend police were not going to arrest him and that the friend needed to leave. The friend ran from the house and was apprehended. Hoosock, a 17-year veteran of the force with a wife and three young children, was looking for cover behind a maple tree in an adjacent yard when he was ambushed. The suspect fired from a back deck. Jensen, on the force for less than three years, was struck after the shooter went to to the front of the house and fired on police officers with an AR-15-style rifle. Jensen was among the officers who returned fire.
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