Ex-convict accused of killing New York cop to appear in court

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. – An ex-convict suspected of gunning down a New York police officer near the Belmont Park racetrack and then fatally shooting a carjacking victim was set to appear before a judge Thursday.

Darrell Fuller was scheduled to be arraigned in First District Court, Nassau County police said.

He was transferred from a hospital to police headquarters on Wednesday. Fuller was hospitalized Tuesday after police say he suffered self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Police say he was arrested hours after he fatally shot a Nassau County Officer Arthur Lopez who suspected he had been involved in a hit-and-run car accident.

The 33-year-old Queens man is suspected of fleeing that shooting and then killing a man while carjacking his vehicle.

It was unknown if he had an attorney.

Fuller served four years in prison after pleading guilty to attempted murder in 2005, authorities said. He was jailed again in 2010 after violating his parole on a drug arrest but was released in May 2011 because there was insufficient evidence to support a stiffer sentence, the Nassau district attorney said Wednesday.

Lopez died Tuesday after getting shot in what had started out as a traffic stop near Belmont Park. The 29-year-old Lopez was on patrol in Bellerose Terrace, a community at the border of New York City's Queens borough and Nassau County. He and his partner spotted a damaged silver Honda that was "running on rims," suspecting it was wanted for leaving the scene of a hit-and-run accident, authorities said.

The officers followed the car, and it pulled over. There was "a brief exchange of words" between Lopez and the driver before the driver left the vehicle and fired one round into Lopez's chest, police Chief Steven Skrynecki said, adding that the officer wasn't wearing a bulletproof vest.

The shooter got back into his car and drove away, and then accosted 52-year-old Queens resident Raymond Facey, authorities said. He shot the Queens man in the head, dragged him out of his car and left him dead on the roadway and then drove away, they said. His daughter, Abbigail, told the New York Post that Facey had pulled over to call her to discuss a family trip to Jamaica to celebrate his mother's 80th birthday.

A funeral for Lopez is planned for Saturday on Long Island.