Police were still investigating who pulled the trigger on the gun that killed the young officer, Brian Mulkeen.
His last words offered a warning to his fellow officers about a weapon. “He’s reaching for it! He’s reaching for it!” Mulkeen, 33, could be heard shouting on a body camera recording, police officials said.
Moments later, Mulkeen and the man he had been chasing, Antonio Lavance Williams, lay mortally wounded outside the Edenwald Houses.
The violent clash began just after midnight when Mulkeen and two other anti-crime officers, who were dressed in street clothes, began chasing Williams. He had fled when the officers approached to ask him about recent shootings police believe involved gangs, Chief Terence Monahan said.
The violence at the Bronx’s largest public housing complex 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, police said.
Mulkeen was shot three times as officers wrestled Williams to the ground, Monahan said early Sunday at a news conference with Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“By every measure, we lost a hero,” the mayor said as he announced the officer’s death.
Investigators recovered a .32-caliber pistol from Williams, but police have said the weapon had not been fired. Williams was shot dead by five responding officers.
Williams, of Binghamton, New York, was on probation for a drug arrest last year and had a prior conviction for burglary in Rockland County, according to police. He was expected back in court on Oct. 4 in his hometown, where he had pleaded not guilty to harassment charges.
The Edenwald Houses have long struggled with gang violence. Gang sweeps helped push violence down to record levels, but it 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, Mulkeen arrived to investigate a rash of gang violence that included several recent shootings, Monahan said. Around 12:30 a.m., he was patrolling with his partner when they spotted someone they wanted to talk to behind Building 22, at 1132 East 229th St., according to police.
The officers got out of their car, prompting the man to start running, Monahan said. They began to chase him and wrestled Williams to the ground.
The struggle and gunfire followed.
Police radio transmissions captured the panic that came next as an officer frantically requested an ambulance.
“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 Mulkeen into a police car that raced toward Jacobi Medical Center, 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 Thursday, according to one of the men, who identified himself only as Al because he feared for his safety.
Police officials did not release the body camera video or the names of the other officers involved.
Williams was convicted of second-degree burglary in 2012 in Rockland County and sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison, according to corrections records. After his release in 2014, he was rearrested on a parole violation and admitted to a drug treatment facility. He was released in March 2015.
Williams’ father, Shawn, declined to comment and hung up on a reporter Sunday. His uncle, Raydell Williams, said only that Williams “was a good nephew.”
Mulkeen, a graduate of Fordham University, 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, 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,” 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 Mulkeen made over the last six years — more than half of them for felony charges. He had earned five medals for excellence, police said.
Mulkeen graduated in 2008 from Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business, where he competed on its track and field team. He made team captain, one of his former coaches said, and won a bronze medal at the 2008 Atlantic 10 Indoor Track & Field Championship. 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 Rev. Joseph McShane, Fordham’s president.
The officer’s former coach, Tom Dewey, said he had transformed himself to become a police officer, including shedding some weight from his 6-foot-4-inch frame.
“He got himself in great, great shape,” 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 being a freshman when Mulkeen was a junior at the university.
“He comes off as this big guy, intimidating in size, but his smile — he had this jolly and cheerful personality,” Horowitz said in an interview. “He was a mentor. Always helpful. You could go to him with any issue.”
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.
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, Texas, was shot and killed while making a traffic stop outside Houston.
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 yardwork. 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 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.
Mulkeen, Mcgann continued, simply replied: “‘Because that’s what I want to do.’”
This article originally appeared in
.