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Police Officer Killed in Bronx Project Scarred by Gangs

The officer was restraining a man who had fled questioning, and could be heard on body camera footage yelling, “He’s reaching for it!”

The shooting took place about 12:30 a.m. outside the Edenwald Houses in the Bronx.Credit...Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times

[Latest: The police commissioner said on Monday that Officer Brian Mulkeen was killed by “friendly fire” from fellow officers’ guns.]

The tone of a New York City police officer’s voice before he was fatally shot with his own gun on Sunday warned his fellow officers that a man he had wrestled to the ground was armed, the police said.

“He’s reaching for it! He’s reaching for it!” Officer Brian Mulkeen, 33, could be heard shouting in police body-camera video, officials said.

The police said they were still investigating who pulled the trigger of Officer Mulkeen’s service pistol as he struggled with the man, Antonio Lavance Williams, whom officers had wanted to question about a recent spate of gang violence at a Bronx housing project.

Investigators recovered a .32-caliber pistol from Mr. Williams, but the police said the weapon had not been fired. Mr. Williams was shot dead by five responding officers, who had not been named.

“It does not appear that the perpetrator’s gun was the one that fired,” Chief Terence A. Monahan said at a news conference with Mayor Bill de Blasio at Jacobi Medical Center, where the officer died. “Officer Mulkeen’s gun fired five times. At this point, we are not sure who fired Officer Mulkeen’s gun.”

“By every measure, we lost a hero,” the mayor said as he announced the officer’s death.

The deadly encounter began just after midnight on Sunday when Officer Mulkeen and two other plainclothes anti-crime officers approached Mr. Williams, Chief Monahan said. Mr. Williams, 27, fled and the officers chased him on foot.

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Officer Brian Mulkeen.Credit...New York Police Department

Mr. Williams, of Binghamton, N.Y., was on probation for a drug arrest last year and had a prior conviction for second-degree burglary in 2012 in Rockland County, according to the police. After his release from prison in 2014 he was rearrested on a parole violation and admitted to a drug treatment facility.

Mr. Williams was expected back in court on Oct. 4 in his hometown, where he had pleaded not guilty to harassment charges.

Mr. Williams’s father, Shawn, declined to comment and hung up on a reporter on Sunday. His uncle, Raydell Williams, said only that Mr. Williams “was a good nephew.”

Gang violence has been a persistent problem at the Edenwald Houses, the Bronx’s largest public housing complex, despite military-style sweeps targeting gangs there and other areas of the city that have resulted in about 1,000 arrests.

The violence stems largely from feuds between rival gangs, which prompted federal and local sweeps across the Bronx that resulted in 120 arrests in a single day in 2016, the police have said.

The sweeps helped to push violence down to record lows, but some crimes began to rise this year, according to police statistics. The 47th Precinct, which includes Edenwald, has had 15 shootings this year through Sept. 22, up from 10 during the same period last year.

On Sunday, Officer Mulkeen arrived to investigate a rash of gang violence that included several recent shootings, Chief Monahan said. At around 12:30 a.m., he was patrolling with his partner when they spotted Mr. Williams behind Building 22 at 1132 East 229th Street, according to the police.

The officers got out of their car, prompting the man to start running, Chief Monahan said. They began to chase him and Officer Mulkeen wrestled Mr. Williams to the ground.

The struggle and gunfire followed. Officer Mulkeen was shot three times, the police said.

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A handgun found near the scene of the shooting.Credit...New York City Police Department, via Associated Press

Police radio transmissions captured the panic that came next as an officer frantically requested an ambulance. Police officials did not release the body-camera video.

“I need a bus! I need a bus!” he said, using police jargon for an ambulance. “Shots fired.”

But instead of waiting for an ambulance, the other officers piled Officer Mulkeen into a police car and raced toward the hospital, one witness said.

Two men who said they were playing chess and dominoes when the gunfire began said there were four groups of Bloods and Crips in the complex that fought over territory and drugs. A feud between two of the Bloods sects, the Stones and the Hounds, over sales of $5 bags of marijuana, had culminated in a shooting on Thursday, according to one of the men, who identified himself only as Al because he feared for his safety.

Officer Mulkeen joined the force in January 2013, after growing restless with an early career in finance, friends and neighbors said. After a patrol stint in the 48th Precinct, he was assigned to a borough anti-crime unit responsible for catching criminals in the act, the police said. He lived in Yorktown Heights with his girlfriend, who is also a police officer in the Bronx.

“Brian was a great cop dedicated to keeping this city safe,” Chief Monahan said. “In fact, just last night he arrested a man in possession of a gun in the very same precinct.”

It was one of more than 260 arrests Officer Mulkeen made over the last six years — more than half of them for felony charges. He had earned five medals for excellence, the police said.

Officer Mulkeen graduated in 2008 from Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business, where he was the team captain for track-and-field, one of his former coaches said. He had recently rejoined the team as a volunteer coach, the school said.

“Brian Mulkeen went out into the world to do exactly what we expect of our alumni — be a man for others — and he was slain in service to the local community,” said the Rev. Joseph M. McShane, Fordham’s president.

The officer’s former coach, Tom Dewey, said Officer Mulkeen had transformed himself to become a police officer, including shedding weight from his 6-foot-4-inch frame.

“He got himself in great, great shape,” Mr. Dewey said. “You could tell he was going to do this and do it well and be prepared.”

Brian Horowitz, who now coaches Fordham’s track teams, recalled memories of when he and Officer Mulkeen were students at the university.

“He comes off as this big guy, intimidating in size, but his smile — he had this jolly and cheerful personality,” Mr. Horowitz said in an interview. “He was a mentor. Always helpful. You could go to him with any issue.”

Daniel Tucker, 34, a sergeant with the Salem Police Department in Massachusetts, said he and Officer Mulkeen became friends in college, where they bonded over a shared love for music. They both played the guitar and sang in bands that sometimes played in coffee shops, he said.

“He was not afraid to get in front of a crowd of people or strangers and just belt it out,” Sergeant Tucker said.

Officer Mulkeen’s death is the latest in a string of tragedies that have plagued the department this year. He is the second officer to be killed on duty in 2019. In February, Detective Brian Simonsen was shot and killed by friendly fire when he and fellow officers confronted a robbery suspect in Queens.

Since January, nine active New York police officers have died by suicide.

Officer Mulkeen is also the second police officer to be killed in the line of duty across the country this weekend. On Friday, Sandeep Dhaliwal, a sheriff’s deputy in Harris County, Tex., was shot and killed while making a traffic stop outside Houston.

Officer Mulkeen’s neighbors said he moved into his Yorktown Heights home about a year ago, and they sometimes saw him fixing up the house and doing yard work. As a newcomer to the neighborhood, he was unprepared for the number of children at his door last Halloween.

“He was literally just moving in and he wasn’t ready for the onslaught of all the trick-or-treaters on the road,” a neighbor, Dan Bellor, 38, said. “He gave each of my girls a dollar bill, and I was like, ‘That’s a better deal than candy.’”

Andrew Mcgann, who lives across the street, said he wondered why Officer Mulkeen was drawn to a job “with all the things that are going on in New York City, the hours he had to work, the travel down to the city.” So he asked.

Officer Mulkeen, Mr. Mcgann continued, simply replied: “‘Because that’s what I want to do.’”

Emily Palmer, Katie Van Syckle and Aislinn Keeley contributed reporting.

Jan Ransom is a reporter covering criminal courts and jails in New York City. Before joining The Times in 2017, she covered law enforcement and crime for The Boston Globe. She is a native New Yorker. More about Jan Ransom

Ali Watkins is a reporter on the Metro desk, covering crime and law enforcement in New York City. Previously, she covered national security in Washington for The Times, BuzzFeed and McClatchy Newspapers. More about Ali Watkins

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 17 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘He’s Reaching for It!’ Officer Cried, Before Being Killed by Own Gun. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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