On the evening of March 14, 1996, 33-year-old NYPD Officer Kevin Gillespie was killed while on patrol in the Bronx. Gillespie and his partner in an unmarked car were following a BMW that had been reported carjacked earlier that day. At about 9:50 p.m., when the stolen car paused at a red light at East 183rd Street and the Grand Concourse, officers boxed it in and the occupants fled on foot. During the pursuit one of the suspects fired, striking Gillespie in the collarbone area above his vest; the bullet traveled downward through his torso and he died about an hour later at St. Barnabas Hospital.

A gun battle continued down the Grand Concourse; one suspect was shot five times and severely wounded and another was arrested at the scene. The person who fired the fatal shot was later arrested and subsequently hanged himself in jail. Gillespie, a former Marine who had served four years with the NYPD and recently joined the Street Crimes Unit, left a widow, Patricia, and two sons, Daniel and Robert. Days before his death he had submitted a proposal for a training program for plainclothes officers that was later implemented.