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Phil. Sergeant Killed Responding to Bank Robbery

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A veteran police officer was shot and killed with an assault weapon after a bank robbery in Northeast Philadelphia on Saturday, authorities said.

Steven Liczbinski, 40, a 12-year veteran who had just been promoted to sergeant, was responding to the robbery of a ShopRite at Castor and Aramingo by at least two men shortly before 11:30 a.m. Saturday, authorities said.

The suspects fled, but a short distance away were confronted by the 24th District officer and opened fire.

“It is my understanding that he was either in the car or had just gotten out of the car at the time he was struck,” Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said.

The suspects fled that area and were later spotted by a canine officer responding to the robbery and the report of an officer down. That officer shot and killed one of the suspects, police said.

Authorities said Liczbinski was married with two sons and a daughter.

“I ask that we rally around his family and wrap our arms around them,” Mayor Michael Nutter said. “He has obviously paid the ultimate sacrifice in serving his fellow Philadelphians.”

“When you first get the page, your heart just sinks,” Ramsey said. “This is hard on all of us.”

Police were searching a wooded area of the Juniata section of the city for another man and a woman. A state police helicopter was helping with the search and federal authorities were investigating the bank robbery.

Police originally described a man and a woman in Muslim-type garb and a man wearing a white hospital mask. The masked man had shoulder-length dreadlocks, but Officer Tanya Little said that could be wig. Ramsey said one of those suspects had been killed, but he did not know which one.

About a dozen blue-shirted officers, some wearing white motorcycle helmets, lined both sides of a black hearse and saluted as the slain officer’s body was put inside. The police motorcycles, some bearing black- and blue-striped flags, then escorted the hearse from the hospital.

The shooting came about six months after the last death of an officer in the line of duty. Officer Chuck Cassidy, 54, also a father of three, was killed during the botched robbery of a doughnut shop on Oct. 31.

Only a few days earlier, Ramsey had announced a major reorganization of the police department’s command structure and the addition of nearly 250 officers on street patrols as part of a strategy to reduce crime.

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