Officer fatally shot, another wounded in Rochester, New York

PTI, Jul 22, 2022, 8:00 PM IST

Image credit: Shawn Dowd/Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

New York: A police officer was fatally shot and another wounded in Rochester, New York, officials said on Friday.

The officers were on patrol as part of a plainclothes tactical unit when they were shot around 9:15 pm on Thursday, authorities said. Police Chief David Smith identified the slain officer as Anthony Mazurkiewicz, a 29-year member of the department.

“Last night, Officer Mazurkiewicz and his partner, Officer Sino Seng, were attacked in a cowardly ambush and fell victim to the very violence in our community that we are trying to combat,” Smith said at a briefing Friday.

Mazurkiewicz was shot at least once in the upper body, Smith said. He was taken to a hospital, where he died. Seng was treated at another hospital and released.

A bystander suffered injuries that were not life-threatening and were treated at the scene, authorities said.

No arrests had been made as of Friday morning. Smith said “the full force of the region’s law enforcement” was being deployed ”to bring whoever is responsible for this heinous act to justice.” The officers were shot the same day that Mayor Malik Evans declared a “gun violence state of emergency” in Rochester, a city of about 200,000 on the shores of Lake Ontario.

”The trajectory, unless we change something, will be the same,” Evans said, according to the Democrat and Chronicle. “We will break records in terms of the bloodshed and carnage we see in our streets.”