A Philadelphia police officer was fatally shot and another injured on their way to work Thursday night when they confronted people breaking into a vehicle in a parking garage at Philadelphia International Airport, the authorities said.
Another person brought to a hospital separately and who died there might have been involved in the shooting, but investigators have not yet confirmed whether that was the case, the city’s interim police commissioner, John M. Stanford, Jr., told reporters early Friday.
Mr. Stanford said on social media that the police were searching for the suspects and intended to bring them into custody. The Philadelphia Police Department did not release the officers’ names.
The officers who were shot were assigned to the airport and had parked in the garage just after 11 p.m., when they approached the people who were breaking into another car, Mr. Stanford said in the news conference.
The “suspects opened fire” on the officers, striking one officer multiple times in the upper torso and the other in the arm, Mr. Stanford said.
Both officers were initially transported to the Methodist Hospital, he said. One of them, age 50, was then sent to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 11:34 p.m. The other officer, 60, was moved to Jefferson Hospital and was in stable condition.
“A numb, numb moment for us,” Mr. Stanford said, adding that three other officers in the department had been shot last week. “You can imagine what this department is going through.”
Because of the shooting, Philadelphia International Airport officials closed Terminal D and the parking garage for Terminals D and E shortly after 11 p.m., a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Aviation, Heather Redfern, said in an email.
During the lockdown, five planes held passengers for about 30 minutes, she said. About 12:30 a.m., officials said that the terminal had reopened for passengers. Access to the parking garage was restored except for Level One, officials said at about 4 a.m.