A New York man accused of shooting a plainclothes police officer last month is due in court on Thursday, where prosecutors plan to add murder to the list of charges he faces following the officer's death.
Demetrius Blackwell, 35, was arrested hours after he allegedly shot New York Police Department officer Brian Moore, 25, in the head after Moore attempted to question him in a middle-class section of the borough of Queens on May 2.
Blackwell was initially charged with first-degree attempted murder, aggravated assault on a police officer, first-degree assault and weapons possession. After Moore died of his wounds on May 4, Queens County District Attorney Richard Brown sought to charge Blackwell with first-degree murder, which carries a maximum possible sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Moore's death came at a time of fraught relations between police and minority communities across the United States.
Police killings of unarmed black men in New York, Missouri, South Carolina and elsewhere have provoked months of largely peaceful protests punctuated with bouts of arson and looting. A gunman who in December shot and killed two uniformed New York police officers as they sat in their patrol car in Brooklyn left postings on social media suggesting his attack was an act of revenge for police killings of black men.
Blackwell is black, and Moore was white.
Moore's shooting did not appear to be politically motivated and his funeral last month featured none of the ire seen at ceremonies for the officers killed in Brooklyn, where thousands of New York Police Department officers in uniform turned their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio, whom police union officials had accused of not adequately supporting officers.
