New York police officer critically wounded in hatchet attack

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A hatchet-wielding attacker charged a group of New York City police officers posing for a photograph yesterday, wounding two, one critically, before the assailant was shot dead, police said.

The officers had been asked by a freelance photographer to pose for a picture and were gathered on a Queens street at 2 pm, a New York Police Department spokesman said.

Suddenly a man carrying a hatchet charged the officers, swinging it and striking one officer in the right arm and then swinging it again and striking a second officer in the head, the spokesman said.