Authorities are searching for a gunman who killed a San Antonio policeman in an ambush, one of four officers shot in the line of duty in Texas, Missouri and Florida on the same day.
The attacks on Sunday, which injured three other officers and led to the shooting death of a suspect, revived painful memories of deadly ambushes targeting police in July in Dallas and Baton Rouge.
In the first incident, 50-year-old Benjamin Marconi, a 20-year veteran of the San Antonio force was fatally shot as he sat in his squad car during a routine traffic stop outside the city's police headquarters.
The assailant stopped his car behind the police cruiser, walked up and shot the officer in the head through the window as he was writing a ticket, San Antonio Police Chief William McManus told a news conference on Monday.
The gunman then reached through the window, fired a second shot into the officer, returned to his vehicle and sped away.
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Also on Sunday, a 46-year-old St. Louis police sergeant was shot in the face by a person in a car who pulled up beside the officer's cruiser at an intersection then fled.
The suspect was later killed in a shootout after officers spotted his car, police said on Monday.
Meanwhile, a third police officer was shot on Sunday during a traffic stop on Sanibel Island on Florida's Gulf Coast but was not seriously hurt, local media reported.
In a fourth incident, a police officer in Kansas City, Missouri, was shot and wounded during a struggle with an armed suspect who tried to flee after a traffic stop, police said.
