Attacker ends cops' relaxing moment

Photographer Dominick Williams caught four New York City cops sharing a relaxing moment. Moments later the group was attacked. Photo/ Motion View Pictures

At top is the chilling picture of four rookie New York cops in Queens, taken seconds before they were ambushed by a hatchet-wielding madman who hacked one of the officers in the back of the head and another in the arm.

Officer Kenneth Healey, 25, and his three comrades are all smiles in a portrait taken by Dominick Williams last Thursday afternoon.

Williams spotted the officers and asked them to stand for a picture.

Seconds later, Zale Thompson ran up to the cops - who were standing against a wall in Jamaica, Queens - and started swinging a sharp hand axe.

Williams says he scrambled for safety as the officers wrestled with Thompson. He hacked Officer Joseph Meeker, 24, in the arm before smashing Healey in the skull.

The other officers opened fire, killing Thompson but also accidentally shooting and gravely wounding a bystander who was caught in the crossfire.

Williams' camera captured the frantic aftermath of the attack.

Healey - who had just four months on the job - can be seen laying face down on the sidewalk - a bloody gash in his head. Another officer can be seen tending to his fallen comrade, holding a cloth over the gushing wound.

Healey was taken to the hospital in critical condition, but is expected to survive the injury.

The pictures also capture Thompson dead on the sidewalk. His body is face up with the axe, still in his hand, laid across his chest.

Williams estimated that the officers fired seven shots.

NYPD top brass has called the attack "an act of terrorism".

Thompson was a self-radicalised Muslim extremist who had an interest in Isis beheadings.

His family described him as a "recluse" with mental health problems.

- Daily Mail