Nassau County Police Officer Shot, Killed in Queens - Wall Street Journal (blog)

By Tamer El-Ghobashy and Sean Gardiner

A Nassau County Police officer was shot and killed in Queens Tuesday during a incident in which another person was fatally shot, a law enforcement official said.

A suspect in the shooting, which occurred on the Cross Island Parkway near the Belmont Race Track, is still being sought, the official said.

According to the official, the officer had pulled a car over at about 11:10 am at the entrance ramp to the parkway at 241^st Street and Jamaica Avenue.

It was unclear what led to the gun violence and why the police officer from Long Island had crossed into Queens. Authorities shut down the parkway while the investigation and the search for the second suspect continues.

The shooting comes just days after Officer Joseph P. Olivieri, 43 years old, was struck and killed while responding to an accident on the Long Island Expressway. Olivieri was the 33^rd Nassau officer to die in the line of duty since the department was created in 1925. The last such death occurred on March 12, 2011, when Officer Geoffrey J. Breitkopf was shot accidentally by a Metropolitan Transportation Authority officer at a crime scene.

NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the shooting apparently stemmed from a traffic accident on the Nassau County side of the border. He said the officers saw the accident and began following one of the vehicles involved when it left the scene.

Kelly said after the shooting, the driver of the vehicle fled southbound on the Cross Island Parkway and may have been involved in another shooting. A person was found with a single gunshot wound to the head "in the vicinity of Hempstead Turnpike" and the parkway, Kelly said.

He said the details of the incident remain murky and that the NYPD was "ready to assist" Nassau County police in the investigation.

Dozens of heavily armed officers from the NYPD and Nassau County have centered their search for the suspect along a suburban stretch of Queens Village along 223rd Street near 113th Avenue, where streets have been cordoned off and low flying police helicopters are hovering above.

Students were ordered to stay in the building at Public School/Intermediate School 295 in Queens due to police activity, an education department spokeswoman said.

The occurred a day after police officers and mourners flooded into Ronkonkoma, N.Y., for Olivieri's funeral.

Carrie Solages, a Nassau County legislator who represents the Elmont area, said the slain officer came from the local precinct there – previously the Fifth Precinct, which recently merged with the Fourth as part of a consolidation.

Solages called it a "tragedy." "It's been a tough year for them," he said of the department's officers.

Pervaiz Shallwani and Will James contributed to this report.