Investigators are searching for at least one and maybe two men who walked into a coffee shop in Washington State early Sunday morning and without warning fatally shot four local police officers.

Police say they need the public's help in finding the killers

Law enforcement officers are calling it a "targeted ambush".

“This was more of an execution, he walked in with the specific mind to shoot police officers, there's no doubt these four were police officers, “says Ed Troyer with Pierce Sheriff’s Department.

Police are still searching for the man they believe is responsible for killing four police officers in Lakewood, Washington about an hour from Seattle.

Witnesses said at approximately 8:15 am, a man walked into the Forza coffee shop and shot four police officers who were working on their laptops getting ready for their shift.

The officers were all in uniform and their patrol cars were parked outside the store .

Three of the victims were men, one was a woman

Investigators say they are looking for at least one man, possibly two

The coffee house is in a suburb of Tacoma, Washington , about 35 miles south of Seattle.

This is the second incident in the area in the last month in which police officers have been targeted.

On Halloween night Seattle police officer Timothy Brenton was shot and killed while sitting in a cruiser.

A tip from the public led to an arrest in that case.

Officials have opened a tip line for this investigation.

They're hoping that the public will point detectives in the right direction again...

“The public is the eyes and ears of everybody and there is a lot more out there of them than us, so if someone knows something or heard something, we have the tip line open and we'd like to hear from them,” says officer Troyer.

Meanwhile, police are questioning everyone who was in the store this morning store owner brad carpenter is himself a retired police officer, he said his employees were fine but he was most worried about the victims' families.