NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller was shot and killed during a traffic stop Monday evening.NYPD/Twitter
An NYPD officer was shot and killed during a traffic stop in the city’s borough of Queens Monday evening.
Officer Jonathan Diller, 31, suffered a wound below his body armor and died at a local hospital.
Diller and another officer approached a car that was illegally parked at a bus stop in the Far Rockaway neighborhood shortly before 6 p.m., a man in the passenger seat pulled a gun and pointed it at the officers. Gunfire erupted, NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban said, and Diller was shot. The other officer also fired, striking the suspect, Caban added.
Officer Diller was a husband and the father of a young child, PIX11 reports.
He was a three-year veteran of the police department, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said. He worked for the Community Response Team in Patrol Borough Queens South, according to the NYPD. During his career, he made more than 70 arrests.
The suspected shooter, 34-year-old Guy Rivera, has at least four prior arrests, a source told Fox News.
The driver of the vehicle, 41-year-old Lindy Jones, has at least 12 prior arrests. His last arrest was in April 2023 for a loaded firearm, the NYPD source told Fox News.
"Less than a year gun charge," New York City Mayor Eric Adams said at a press conference. "He's back on the streets. April 2023. This is what you call not a crime problem, a recidivist problem. Same bad people doing bad things to good people. Less than a year, he's back on the streets with another gun."
Rivera, the suspected gunman, has been arrested by the NYPD 21 times -- nine of them felonies. He was released from prison in September 2021 after serving nearly five years for criminal sale of a controlled substance. He previously spent three years in state prison for a 2011 assault and was released in October 2014, ABC7 reports.
