3 police officers ambushed in Florida, Texas, Missouri

One US police officer has been killed and two more have been injured as the results of two separate ambush-style attacks in Texas, Florida and Missouri.

The first attack took place in San Antonio, Texas on Sunday, when a police detective was shot and killed in his squad car during a traffic stop, according to authorities.

Police Chief William McManus said the assailant pulled over behind Officer Benjamin Marconi’s car and then walked to the veteran cop’s window, shooting him two times in the head.

The identity of the gunman and his motives were not immediately clear, McManus said, noting that the shooting had nothing to do with the traffic stop.

Hours later, another similar attack took place in St. Louis, Missouri, where an officer was shot two times in the face as he sat in his car.

The unidentified shooter pulled next to the officer with his car and managed to flee the scene after shooting him.

However, he was later on killed in a shootout with a group of officers who spotted his car, according to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Despite being shot in the face, the wounded officer was conscious and able to speak after the attack, said St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson.

In a third ambush-style attack, an officer was shot in during a traffic stop on Sanibel Island, Florida.

Following the shooting, the officer was rushed to a nearby hospital, where his shoulder wound was treated.

The attacker was later on arrested at his home on an island off Ft. Myers, police said.

A surge in deliberate attacks on police officers across the US indicates that there are growing anti-police sentiments over the officers’ use of violence against civilians, African Americans in particular.

Earlier this year, five officers in Dallas, Texas, and three officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, were fatally shot after police killed two black men in separate incidents.

“This is everyone’s worst nightmare,” McManus said of the recent surge in police killings across the US. “You never want to see anything like this happen. Unfortunately, like Dallas, like Baton Rouge, it’s happened here now.”