Early Start's new website
NYC Cop Killer Had Criminal Record and Angry Social Media Posts, Police Say
The man who shot and killed two New York City police officers as they sat in their patrol car had posted angry messages on social media, ranting against the government and police, New York Police Department's Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said Sunday.
Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, also posted messages of self-loathing and despair and made reference online to Michael Brown and Eric Garner, African-American men who were killed by police.
"I'm Putting Wings On Pigs Today. They Take 1 Of Ours, Let's Take 2 of Theirs," an Instagram post read, authorities said.
Brinsley had a lengthy criminal record. He was arrested 15 times in Georgia for assorted crimes and arrested four times in Ohio, Boyce told reporters Sunday.
He was in prison in Georgia between August 2011 and July 2013 for criminal possession of a weapon, Boyce said.
Brinsley had an address connected to him in Georgia but that appears to be his sister's home, and they are estranged, Boyce said. The gunman's connection to Brooklyn is that his mother lives there, but they are also estranged, the chief of detectives said.
On Saturday afternoon, Brinsley fired four rounds at officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. The officers, who were hit in head, were assigned from their normal downtown Brooklyn beat to an area of the borough with a high crime rate, authorities said.
New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton said the officers were shot "with no warning, no provocation."
NTSB Kicks Train Union Out of Investigation
The NTSB said it has booted the rail union from its investigation into the weekend's deadly train derailment for violating confidentiality rules.
The agency made the announcement late Tuesday night, hours after a union representative told CNN that the train engineer apparently "was nodding off and caught himself too late" before the accident.
The train derailment Sunday killed four people and injured 67 others in New York.
In its announcement, the NTSB specifically cited those comments as the violation.
Anthony Bottalico, the union representative, told CNN that engineer William Rockefeller Jr. recognizes his responsibility in the incident.
"I think most people are leaning towards human error," Bottalico said.
Rockefeller's lawyer, Jeffrey Chartier, characterized what happened as "highway hypnosis." He said his client had had a full night's sleep before the crash, and had no disciplinary record.
In a brief conversation with investigators, Rockefeller said that moments before the derailment of the Hudson Line train in the Bronx he was "going along and I'm in a daze. I don't know what happened," according to a law enforcement official familiar with that conversation.
Rockefeller spoke to Metropolitan Transportation Authority and New York Police detectives at the crash site before he was taken to the hospital Sunday.
According to NTSB representatives, results from alcohol breath tests for the train engineer were negative, and the brake and signal systems in the deadly Metro-North accident appeared to be working. Other toxicology results have not yet come back.
Fatigue is a factor being investigated, according to a separate New York law enforcement source. But Rockefeller also told investigators on site that the brakes had failed, as CNN reported previously. Officials noted the train had been able to stop nine times at stations ahead of the crash.
The train was equipped with a "dead man's pedal," designed to stop the train if the engineer becomes incapacitated, said National Transportation Safety Board member Earl Weener. But it was unclear whether that emergency system was activated.
On Twitter
