The 28-year-old attacker who had fatally shot at two New York police officers in their squad car had a long criminal record, the authorities said on Sunday.
According to the police department, the gunman had a severe hatred for the government and the police.
The authorities also found that the attacker had an apparent mental history of instable state of mind as he was found on one occasion that he had attempted to hang himself a year ago.
According to the authorities, attacker Ismaaiyl Brinsley approached people on the street just moments before opening fire and asked them to follow him on Instagram.
Soon after inviting the people, Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said that Brinsley said, “Watch what I’m going to do.”
Meanwhile, the investigators are trying hard to determine if Brinsley had taken part in the protests that were called over the encounters of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, the blacks who were shot dead by white cops in Ferguson and New York respectively.
The authorities have found that he had traveled frequently between the South and New York, where he had fathered a child in Brooklyn. He had been in the New York city earlier in the week.
Brinsley had at least 19 arrests in Ohio and Georgia. He has also spent two years in jail for gun possession. Moreover, he had a troubled childhood and he was very violent when he was young.
Brinsley had shot dead two police officials, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, in “execution-style” on Saturday afternoon in a parked patrol car in Brooklyn.