NYC says officer killed by friendly fire
NEW YORK -- New York City police said Monday that an officer killed while wrestling with an armed man was fatally struck by gunfire from his fellow officers.
Police Commissioner James O'Neill said officer Brian Mulkeen, 33, was hit twice by police bullets during the confrontation early Sunday in the Bronx.
"This is a tragic case of friendly fire," O'Neill said during a news conference at police headquarters.
Suspect Antonio Williams, 27, was also killed during the burst of gunfire, in which several officers fired shots. The entire exchange took around 10 seconds, O'Neill said.
Police say a .32-caliber revolver belonging to Williams was recovered at the scene. It had not been fired.
Investigators had previously suggested that Williams had wrested the officer's gun away as the pair struggled on the ground, saying body camera video had recorded Mulkeen saying, "He's reaching for it!"
But police said Monday that Mulkeen retained control of his gun and fired several shots during the encounter.
Mulkeen's death is the second time this year that a member of the New York Police Department has been killed by friendly fire.
Judge scraps states' suit to halt tax cap
Four states in the eastern U.S. lost a legal challenge to a provision of the 2017 law that limited write-offs for state and local taxes, as a federal judge threw out a lawsuit seeking to block the cap.
The 2017 tax law backed by Republicans capped the amount of state and local tax, or SALT, deductions, which had been unlimited, to $10,000. Democrats in Congress and some state lawmakers said the change targeted Democratic-led states that tend to have higher taxes. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called it "economic civil war."
On Monday, U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken threw out a lawsuit over the cap filed last year by New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland. The judge said the federal government has the "exhaustive" power to impose and collect income taxes and that the states can enact their own tax policies as they wish.
"To be sure, the SALT cap, like any other feature of federal law, makes certain state and local policies more attractive than others as a practical matter," Oetken said. "But the bare fact that an otherwise valid federal law necessarily affects the decisional landscape within which states must choose how to exercise their own sovereign authority hardly renders the law an unconstitutional infringement of state power."
Cuomo said New York is considering appealing the decision. "The bottom line is this policy is unprecedented, unlawful, punitive and politically motivated -- and it must be stopped," he said in a statement.
19th Republican House seat opens up
WASHINGTON -- A Texas congressman is the latest House Republican to announce he won't run for re-election.
U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, a former chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he would not seek re-election in 2020, saying "I believe that the time has come for a change."
"With over a year to go, I will continue to represent the people of the 13th District to the best of my ability," Thornberry said in a statement. "Our nation faces many difficult challenges, and none of us can relax our efforts to meet and overcome them, whether at home or around the world."
Thornberry, 61, has been a member of Congress since 1994. His district in the Texas panhandle has been safely Republican and isn't considered competitive.
He is the 19th House Republican leaving Congress. That includes two members who have resigned and are already gone.
There are 23 House Republicans from Texas, and six have said they're not coming back. At least three of the retiring Texas Republicans are vacating seats largely in suburban districts that Democrats could win.
4 escaped inmates from Ohio jail caught
CARY, N.C. -- All four inmates who overpowered two female corrections officers and escaped from a county jail in Ohio were caught Monday in North Carolina after more than a day on the run, authorities in both states said.
Three men who escaped from the Gallia County jail early Sunday were "captured without incident" at around 2 a.m. in Cary, N.C. Gallia County Sheriff Matt Champlin announced Monday afternoon that the fourth was taken into custody in Durham, N.C.
The fourth man, Lawrence R. Lee, 29, got away at the time Christopher Clemente, 24; Brynn Martin, 40; and Troy McDaniel Jr., 30, were being arrested. The four will be held pending extradition to Ohio.
Cary police said the North Carolina Highway Patrol had alerted the department that the men were in the area, around 370 miles southeast of Gallipolis, the city where the jail is located.
Champlin has said authorities believe the escaped inmates had help from at least one person outside the jail. The four inmates overpowered the two officers with a homemade weapon, forced open a secure door, entered the jail's administrative wing and stole keys to a corrections officer's vehicle and drove it about a block away, where another vehicle awaited them, Champlin said.
-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports
A Section on 10/01/2019