Spotlight: Gunman who shot Philadelphia police officer says he is IS sympathizer

A gunman who shot and seriously wounded a police officer in the U.S. northeastern city of Philadelphia said he had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group, police said Friday.

Edward Archer, 30, used a gun stolen from the police and fired at least 13 shots at point-blank range at officer Jessie Hartnett, who was sitting in his patrol car at an intersection in west Philadelphia on Thursday night, the city's police commissioner Richard Ross said.

The shooting came amid heightened security alert in the United States following an IS-inspired mass shooting in California early December that killed 14 people and a series of terror attacks in Paris in November that killed 130.

MIDNIGHT AMBUSH

Still images released from a surveillance video showed that the gunman, dressed in a long white robe, was walking toward the car and firing, eventually getting close enough to shoot directly through the window.

"This is absolutely one of the scariest things I've ever seen," Ross told a press conference. "This guy tried to execute the police officer. The police officer had no idea he was coming."

Hartnett, 33, who was shot three times in his arm, managed to return fire, hitting the suspect, who was quickly arrested by other officers.

Ross said he was "absolutely amazed" that Hartnett, an officer with five years of experience, had survived from the more-than-a-dozen shots from a nine millimeter handgun at close range.

Hartnett was in stable condition.

IS SYMPATHIZER

Captain James Clark, head of the homicide unit, said the suspect told investigators: "I follow Allah. I pledge my allegiance to the Islamic State and that's why I did what I did."

Police said Archer had a criminal record but it was unclear whether he acted alone or as part of a wider conspiracy.

"He doesn't appear to be a stupid individual, just an extremely violent one," Ross said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has joined the Philadelphia police in the investigation. They searched a two-storey row house just two blocks away from the intersection where Hartnett was shot, where Archer was believed to have stayed at times, as well as a residence outside the city where his mother lives.

Archer's mother, Valerie Holliday, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that Archer had suffered head injuries from football and a moped accident.

"He's been acting kind of strange lately. He's been talking to himself," and hearing voices, the newspaper quoted Holliday as saying. "We asked him to get medical help."

Jacob Bender, executive director of the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a U.S. muslim advocacy group, said he had contacted five inner-city mosques and found no one who knew of Archer, who according to his mother was a devout Muslim.

Thursday's shooting is likely to raise further concerns in the United States about the threat posed by religious radicals that are inspired by radical Islamic ideology.

On Dec. 2, two suspects, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on a holiday gathering at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino with long rifles, killing 14 people and injuring 21 others.

The couple died in a shootout with police hours later. Both killers were believed to have been radicalized before the massacre.

"The (California) violence shows American vulnerability to lone wolf attacks. It is hard to find individuals who plan their attacks in isolation from other people. There are numerous soft targets in the United States with few defenses and high vulnerability," Brookings Institution's senior fellow Darrell West told Xinhua. Endi