NEW YORK - An off-duty New York City police officer from New Rochelle was killed in a crash with a city-owned garbage truck in the Bronx today.

Brian Kessler died after a head-on crash while driving home from work around 8:20 a.m., New York Police Department Assistant Chief Larry Nikunen said at a press conference at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, where the 28-year-old officer was pronounced dead.

The NYPD said fellow officers responding to a 911 call found Kessler unconscious and unresponsive at 870 Shore Road in Pelham Bay Park. Police said they believe both vehicles were moving when the crash occurred.

Two city employees in the truck were taken to Jacobi with minor injuries, police said.

Kessler, who was engaged, had been an officer with the NYPD's Housing Bureau in the Bronx for past nine months, police said. He was working a security shift at police headquarters in Manhattan overnight and was on his way home when the crash occurred, police said.

"He was well liked," Chief of Housing James Secreto said at the press conference.

Pictures of the crash scene in the borough’s Pelham section show a damaged green city parks department garbage truck resting against the passenger side of the officer’s car on the side of a two-lane road.

The officer’s car had significant front-end damage.

The crashed happened on a stretch of Shore Road that runs along a pair of public golf courses. It’s about 1½ miles from the NYPD’s Rodman’s Neck firing range and training facility.

The Associated Press cont