An upstate off-duty New York police officer fatally shot a 27-year-old woman before she turned the gun on herself and took her own life Monday, Rochester police said.
Tiffani Gatson, 29, an officer with the Greece Police Department, shot two women at a Rochester home before she died by suicide. Greece is a suburb of Rochester, in western New York on Lake Ontario.
Gatson, who had been an officer in Greece since September 2018, was off duty at the time, Greece police said.
Rochester police said in a statement that they responded to a "domestic related altercation" around 7:20 p.m.
Responding officers found all three women outside the home with gunshot wounds, according to the state attorney general’s office, which is investigating as required by law when an officer commits a crime.
Angely Solis, 27, was pronounced dead at the scene.
A woman in her 30s who suffered non-life-threatening injuries from multiple gunshots to her upper body was sent to a hospital. She was not publicly identified.
Gatson was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead shortly afterward, police said.
Officers found a Smith & Wesson 9 mm handgun at the scene, which they determined was not Gatson's service weapon, the attorney general's office said.
The two victims are related, NBC affiliate WHEC of Rochester reported. Police would not clarify the relationship between the victims and Gatson.
Gatson was the first African American woman to join the Greece Police Department in 2019, WHEC reported.
“On behalf of the Town of Greece Police Department, I would like to express our collective sorrow and grief with respect to last night’s events in the City of Rochester,” Greece Police Chief Michael Wood said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, we have seen events of this nature occur all too frequently and struggle to find answers in the aftermath. The effects are far-reaching, from those who have lost loved ones to others throughout law enforcement organizations when a police officer commits such a horrible act, to our entire community."
