4 US police shot dead in ambush

FOUR police officers were shot dead yesterday morning in what authorities called a targeted ambush at a coffee house in Washington state, a sheriff’s official said.

Officials at the scene in Tacoma said two gunmen burst into the Forza Coffee Co and shot the four uniformed officers as they were working on their laptop computers, then fled the scene.

Pierce County Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said investigators believe the officers were targeted, and it was not a robbery.

Troyer tells the newspaper “it was just a flat out ambush”.

He could not immediately say what agency the officers were from. Police were searching for two suspects and interviewing witnesses. The coffee shop is near McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma, about 56km south of Seattle.

“We hopefully will have answers, but there is nothing more we can tell you,” Troyer told KING-TV. “That’s as cold-hearted as it is.”

Roads were blocked around the attack. A witness driving past told the newspaper he saw an officer on the ground just after the shootings.