The man who murdered a New York City police officer on July 5 had been previously arrested for assaulting another officer and for other offenses, local media reported.
Alexander Bonds, 34, ambushed Officer Miosotis Familia, 48, on July 5 and shot her in the head at around 12:30 a.m. But that was only his latest of multiple crimes. Bonds was killed by police.
In 2001, he was arrested for allegedly using brass knuckles to attack a police officer with four other assailants, The New York Post learned.
He was also arrested for drug possession and in 2004 spent eight months in prison for selling drugs.
In 2005, he was again arrested, this time for armed robbery, and sentenced to eight years in prison. He was paroled in 2013.
“He is scary! He looks crazy!” said Aaliyah Merino, 15, who lives across the street from Bonds’s home in the Bronx. “I never talk to him but he talks to me. He always asks if I will get with one of his friends.”
“When you see him at night, you would want to be careful and cross the street,” she told the Daily News. “I would see him hanging out with his friends … walking around, selling drugs. He would argue with his friends in the street and play fight all the time.”
In the early morning on July 5, while still on parole, Bonds approached a police van in Fordham Heights in the Bronx and shot one round into the window, striking Familia in the head. She was rushed to St. Barnabas Hospital where she died.
Bonds was chased by two officers and killed after he pulled a gun on them shortly after the murder, NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill said at a July 5 early morning press conference, according to a video of the conference posted by NYPD.
Familia was a mother to a 20-year-old woman and twin 12-year-olds, a boy and a girl. She was a nurse and a Red Cross worker before joining the force.
Last year in this country, 66 law enforcement officers were shot dead, up more than 50 percent from the previous year, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial.
Familia’s death is a reminder of December 2014 when two NYPD officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, were ambushed while sitting in their patrol car and shot dead by a man who had pledged to kill police.
“Violence against police officers cannot stand. When you see or hear someone making threats against NYC police officers you need to let us know, you need to be our eyes and ears,” said Patrick Lynch, president of the city’s police union, NYC Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, in a statement.
Petr Svab for NTD Television