By Alex Baldino
Staff Writer
A man opened fire on a police van in the Bronx on the night of Feb. 8, shooting at and wounding the two officers inside, according to CNN.
The following day, Robert Williams, suspected of the shooting that occurred Saturday, opened fire inside the 41st Precinct headquarters in the Bronx, according to The Washington Post.
Williams told investigators he did it because he hates cops, a law enforcement official told CNN.
The second shooting on Feb. 9, resulted in a lieutenant being shot in the arm. The lieutenant was wounded but is in stable condition, NYPD commissioner Dermot Shea told CNN.
Both incidents were caught on video and shared on social media.
The video of the 41st Precinct shows Williams laying down and not resisting arrest after running out of ammo.
"‘This is not a crime gone bad,’” Shea said, according to CNN. “‘This is not a liquor store robbery interrupted, that a tragedy erupts from. This is a premeditated assassination attempt.’”
Robert Williams has a police record that includes a 2002 attempted murder conviction for a Bronx crime spree that ended in a shootout with police officers, according to the New York Post.
Shea said in a press briefing that he’s confident that Williams is also behind the shooting that occurred Saturday night.
Williams was briefly locked up on a parole violation but sprung again in January 2019. He had a court date scheduled for Monday, Feb. 10 for his parole violation, but his grandmother said that he had kept his nose clean since getting back on the street, according to the New York Post.
Robert Williams’ grandmother said that “‘he was depressed at times because his son got shot in the street,’” according to the New York Post.
The suspect’s son, Robert Williams, 18, was found shot dead near the intersection of Watson and Ward avenues in Soundview in June 2018, according to the New York Post.
