McDonald, an eight-year veteran, was the third Philadelphia officer to die this year and the fifth in the last two years. He was single, a member of the elite Highway Patrol, and lived alone in the Morrell Park neighborhood in the Far Northeast.
The gunman was identified as Daniel Giddings, 27, who was recently released from state prison after serving time for a 1998 robbery and aggravated assault. A warrant had been issued last month for his arrest in connection with an altercation with police.
One of the officers who responded to McDonald's 1:45 p.m. call for assistance, Richard Bowes, 36, was wounded in a leg during the shoot-out, in which police said at least 30 shots were exchanged.
Police said that Giddings was clutching a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol when he fell on the 2300 block of North 17th Street. He died at the scene.
McDonald, who police said had been able to unholster his sidearm but not to fire it, was pronounced dead at Temple University Hospital at 2:08 p.m.
"I do not know what is going on in the minds of some of these individuals out here," an angry Mayor Nutter said outside the hospital. "When they come upon a Philadelphia police officer . . . somehow they believe they can engage in gunfights with us."
Though Philadelphia has recorded a 21 percent decline in homicides this year under Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, the attacks on police officers have increased.
McDonald's killing occurred less than two weeks after the department buried Officer Isabel Nazario, who was killed Sept. 5 when a suspect in a stolen car crashed into her vehicle during a pursuit.
Yesterday, several hundred officers, still wearing black crepe mourning bands on their badges for Nazario, wept openly as news spread outside the hospital of McDonald's death.
