A US police officer has shot and killed his recently divorced wife after chasing her down in his car with their 7-year-old daughter watching from the front seat of the vehicle.

Off-duty police Sergeant, Phil Seidle, 51, was arrested on first-degree murder, weapons and child endangerment charges in the death of his ex-wife, 51-year-old Tamara Siedle, Monmouth County prosecutors said on Tuesday.

According to prosecutors, the officer chased a car driven by his ex-wife for several miles in New Jersey on Tuesday morning with their daughter in the front seat.

When Tamara’s car crashed into an unoccupied parked vehicle and the chase ended, Seidle got out from his car and approached her driver's side window.

Once he got close to the car, he fired several gunshots into the car and then held the gun to his own head, prosecutors said.

Police officers in the neighborhood for an unrelated traffic accident managed to take the girl from the car and remove her from the scene.

After a 30-minute standoff between him and police, during which Siedle had a gun to his head, officers eventually managed to convince him to put the weapon down and surrender.

Michael Terrell, who witnessed the scene, said Seidle was shouting at his ex-wife about their child custody fights.

"The guy was in the middle of the street," Terrell told the Asbury Park Press newspaper. “He was saying, ‘I'm tired of going to court.’”

The couple had nine children ranging in age from 7 to 24.

The US averages 87 deaths each day as a function of gun violence, with an average of 183 injured, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the Centers for Disease Control.

SB/AGB