tried on identities
ニューヨークで昨年起きた警察官射殺事件の容疑者に関する記事がNYTにありました。tried on identitiesは，服を着替えるようにidentitiesをころころと変えるという意味ですが，ここのidentitiesはどう訳したらよいのでしょうか。Starlightさん，どうぞ。（Yokosay）
Many Identities of New York Officers’ Killer Fueled a Life of Wrong Turns
His entire life, Ismaaiyl Brinsley — who the police said shot and killed two New York City police officers last month — tried on identities as if they were new sets of clothes. He was a bad boy with a pistol, a fashion-forward maven in Gucci, a T-shirt maker, a film director, a devout Muslim, a rap producer. Online, he seemed as if he was always screaming for attention.
In reality, Mr. Brinsley’s short life was a series of disappointments. He was the teenager who couldn’t find a home, the adult who could never make anything work. In recent weeks, Mr. Brinsley was becoming increasingly desperate — the gap between the life he wanted at age 28 and the life he had looming ever larger. If he couldn’t get it together, he told the mother of his second child in early December, he would kill himself.
On his final day — Dec. 20 — he visited his ex-girlfriend Shaneka Thompson in suburban Baltimore. He pointed the silver Taurus 9-millimeter pistol at his head. Ms. Thompson talked him out of it, she would later tell police. Then he shot her, she said. Panicked, Mr. Brinsley fled to Brooklyn, the place he considered home.
What he did next — ambushing Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu as they sat in their patrol car, before killing himself — devastated two police families and became the accelerant in a political struggle: a confrontation between the police union and Mayor Bill de Blasio.
