Convicted Felon Adam Powell Attempted To Assassinate Police Officers After His Toddler Was Shot

Convicted felon Adam Powell is in critical condition after his attempt to assassinate two Vallejo (CA) Police Department officers failed when his illegal AR-15 SBR malfunctioned before he could get a shot off, and the officers opened fire on him in return.

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Police say a man with an assault-type rifle, handgun and body armor was shot by officers after a confrontation just after 9 p.m. Sunday at a Vallejo Starbucks.

The two officers were inside Starbucks on a coffee break when they say they were ambushed by the suspect. They say he tried to fire at them, but his gun malfunctioned.

The officers shot the suspect three times at Magazine and Sheridan streets and he was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.

The suspect has been identified by police as 41-year-old Adam Powell, the father of a 2-year-old boy who was shot earlier Sunday in Suisun City. Police say he is a convicted felon with robber and drug-related offenses.

While Powell is a person of interest in the shooting of his child, police say all indications show that it was an accidental shooting.

ABC7 News was first to obtain surveillance video of the moments following the attempted attack in Vallejo. Police started chasing Powell, guns drawn. They say he kept trying to fire at officers as he fled the scene.

Powell made it just 30 yards beyond the entrance of the Starbuck, still trying to clear his weapon, before officers fired what a witness claimed were “more than a dozen” shots, striking him three times and ending the threat.

Hours before the attack, Powell’s toddler son suffered what are believed to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, presumably with one of Powell’s illegally-acquired weapons. Powell was home at the time of the shooting, but fled before first responders arrived to save his son.

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A photo released by the Vallejo Police shows that the firearm Powell attempted to use in the attack is a battered AR-15 SBR, almost certainly cobbled together from a standard AR-15 carbine lower receiver and a pistol length upper. It was fitted with a Magpul D60, a 60-round drum magazine.

Initial accounts claim that Powell was wearing body armor during the attempted assassination.  A call to the Vallejo Police Department public information officer Lieutenant Jeff Bassett to confirm that Powell was wearing actual body armor and not just a load-bearing vest has not yet been returned.

Powell’s attempted murder of these officers comes after in a long string of attacks this summer and fall on officers by Black Lives Matter-affiliated domestic terrorists. It is not known at this time of Powell has any ties to the organization or Black Nationalist groups as did the terrorists who attacked police officers in Baton Rouge and Dallas.

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