(R.I.P.) BREAKING NEWS: Sheriff's official says 4 police officers shot dead in ambush at Wash. state coffee house

By Associated Press

12:59 PM CST, November 29, 2009

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — Four police officers were shot and killed Sunday morning in what authorities called a targeted ambush at a coffee house in Washington state, a sheriff's official said.

Pierce County Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer told The News Tribune in Tacoma one or 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.

Troyer said investigators believe the officers were targeted, and it was not a robbery.

"It looks like a flat-out ambush," Troyer told the newspaper.

The four officers were about to go to work, Troyer said. He said officers were looking for a male suspect who fled on foot, and "at this point we may be looking for another person."

He could not immediately say what agency the officers were from. The coffee shop is near McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma, about 35 miles south of Seattle.

"The four of them are known by everybody here," Troyer said. "We haven't got any information as to why this happened."

Roads were blocked around the attack. Dave Gabrielson, a clerk at Foot Mart about a block away from the coffee shop, told the newspaper all was quiet when he opened the store at 8 a.m. About 30 minutes later, "All of a sudden a million cops were zooming up and down the road," Gabrielson said.

He said he saw officers bring a police dog into a nearby apartment complex.

The baristas who were inside the shop are "stunned and shocked, traumatized," Troyer said.

"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."

Last month, Seattle police officer Timothy Brenton was shot and killed Halloween night as he was sitting in a cruiser with trainee Britt Sweeney. Sweeney was grazed in the neck.

Christopher Monfort, 41, of suburban Tukwila, was charged in the shooting. Days after the shooting, Seattle detectives attempted to question Monfort at his residence. Police say that Monfort then ran from the detectives and tried to use a gun. The detective shot him.

Authorities also linked Monfort to the October firebombing of four police vehicles, with prosecutors saying Monfort waged a "one-man war" against law enforcement.

Monfort remained hospitalized.