Authorities on Thursday killed a man suspected of shooting dead four people a day earlier in separate incidents at a barbershop and a car wash in neighboring upstate New York towns, Gov.Andrew Cuomo said.

The suspected gunman, identified as Kurt Myers, 64, was killed in a shootout with law enforcement officials at an abandoned building in Herkimer, New York, where he had barricaded himself the previous day.

“This morning law enforcement officials entered the building and, after being fired upon, shot and killed the suspect, Kurt Myers,” Cuomo said in a statement. “There were no injuries to law enforcement officials, though an FBI police dog was fatally shot.”

Four people were killed and two others critically injured in the shootings on Wednesday in the sleepy New York villages of Herkimer and Mohawk, which face one another across the Mohawk River.

The violence began on Wednesday, when Myers drove to John’s Barber Shop in Mohawk at about 9:30 a.m. EDT on Wednesday and, after a brief exchange of words, opened fire with a shotgun, according to police.

Two customers were killed, and the owner and another customer were critically wounded, New York State Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico said.

“Totally unprovoked, we believe he fired a number of rounds from the shotgun,” he said on Wednesday.

The shooter then drove to Gaffey’s Fast Lube in the neighboring Herkimer, and fired again, D’Amico said, striking and killing two people.

State police in military garb and using an armored vehicle surrounded an abandoned building in the downtown section of Herkimer, a town of 7,700 people, on Wednesday afternoon. Shots were fired from inside the building and police returned fire.

Myers’ arrest record includes a drunken driving charge in 1973, police said.

The killings took place shortly after a fire was reported at the Mohawk apartment house where Myers lived, said Mohawk Mayor James Baron.

A search of the apartment turned up a cache of guns and ammunition, according to officials.

In January Cuomo signed into law one of the country’s toughest gun control measures, the first enacted in the wake of the mass shooting in December that killed 20 students and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.

The law expands the state’s ban on assault weapons, puts limits on ammunition capacity and has new measures to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. It also mandates a life sentence without parole for anyone who murders a first responder.

Those killed in the car wash shooting were identified as Thomas Stefka, an employee at Gaffey’s, and Michael Renshaw, a 20-year employee of the New York State Corrections Department, state police said.

The barbershop victims were Harry Montgomery, 68, of Mohawk, and Michael Rancier, 57, of Herkimer. The shop owner, John Seymour, and a customer, Dan Haslauer, were rushed to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Utica in critical condition, state police said.

The two towns are located about midway between Albany, the state capital, and Syracuse.

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The decades-long fight for women’s equal pay in New York is finally gaining traction, spearheaded by Governor Andrew Cuomo and encouraged by his supporters.

Cuomo made women’s pay equity one of the 10 goals in the Woman’s Equality Act he announced over the weekend — and a recent Quinnipiac survey showed many New Yorkers stand with him. Fifty-three percent of those polled said that equal pay for women should be the highest priority for the state legislature, with another 36 percent saying it should be a high priority. Only 10 percent considered it lower priority.

A report released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in December indicates that in 2011, New York State female full-time wage and salary workers made median weekly earnings of $760 — or 85 percent — of the $894 median weekly earnings for their male counterparts.

Beverly Neufeld, the director of the Equal Pay Coalition NYC, believes now is the time for pay equity reform.

“There is talk on all state levels about economic security, understanding that women are a driving force in the economy and businesses do better when they have routine loyal and committed workers,” Neufeld said.

Elizabeth Mason, an employment lawyer in Manhattan currently represents a client who was overlooked for a promotion. Although she had as many work responsibilities and was more educated than her male co-worker, she made significantly less money.

“It was very clear from the supervisor’s comments, and even the male individual, that she was not being treated equally and fairly because of her gender,” Mason said.

This case and others got Mason thinking about the reasons pay equity hasn’t already been enacted.

“From a pragmatic standpoint, the reason why there is this feeling of unequal pay is because employers have been allowed to get away with it due to an employee’s inability to know what her co-workers are making. Until the playing field is leveled, women employees are a distinct disadvantage,” Mason said.

Women’s rights experts give a range of reasons for why women aren’t paid the same as men, including the fact that historically men have always made more, the different career paths a woman might chose to go into, whether they took time off to raise a family or not, and whether women may be less likely to ask for a raise.

Linda Hartley, 58, the vice president of New York Women’s Agenda who works full-time as the president of Hartley Consulting, said she faced pay discrimination in the 1980s when she worked at a fundraising development office. Although her boss told her she was much more effective than the man who previously held the position, a colleague told her that she was making to 20 percent less than the man when he worked there. Hartley said that after bringing the matter up with her bosses, she finally earned a significant raise, although still less than her predecessor.

Her experiences with pay inequity informed her women’s rights work today. “This isn’t something we should be talking about anymore,” she said. “We should be done. Move on. There are other things that deserve our attention.”
It hasn’t been easy to move on, but Sonia Ossorio, president of the National Organization for Women New York City, said she thinks Gov. Cuomo can make it possible.

“There are certainly very strong players in the business community that can lobby against these basic inequity reforms and there has been a lack of political wealth to fix this problem,” Ossorio said. “Our current governor appears to be making up a lot of that. If we want to see our daughters earn their fair share, we need to act now. We need to do it or we’re going to see another generation being underpaid.”

NUMBER

$74,215 Average salary for a man in New York City, according to PayScale.com, which collects salary info

$58,360 Average salary for a female in New York City

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In his State of the State speech recently, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a plan for a 10-point Women’s Equality Act.

The points related to a number of issues, from equal pay to stricter repercussions for sexual harassment in the workplace, but the governor saved what is likely the most contentious point for number 10: enacting a Reproductive Health Act “protect[ing] a woman’s freedom of choice.”

The governor did not expand on what that would entail, though his office confirmed that, broadly, it would involve removing abortion from New York state penal law, and regulating it through the state’s public health law instead, as well as augmenting the criteria under which late-term abortions are permitted.

Late-term abortions are those performed more than 24 weeks into a pregnancy.

Currently, New York state law allows late-term abortions in cases where the mother’s life is in danger. Federal law permits late-term abortions in those cases as well, but also includes cases where there is a threat to the mother’s health, or the fetus is non-viable.

Doctors who perform abortions in the latter cases are protected by federal law, even if the abortions occur in New York state.

Opponents of the bill are referring to it as the Abortion Expansion Act, prompting the governor to repeatedly insist that his law “doesn’t change the legal parameters whatsoever” as it only “codifies [federal policy] as New York state law.”

However, when pressed, the Governor conceded that “the point of having it in the state law is if the Supreme Court ever made a different decision,” referring to the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationally in 1973.

“Maybe not this year, but it could happen, and if you have a state law, you’re protected,” Cuomo explained.

The law would be significant nationally, as the last two years have seen a record number of laws restricting abortion access on the state level, according to a policy review from the Guttmacher Institute.

In 2012, 19 states passed a total of 43 provisions restricting abortion, while no laws were enacted to facilitate or increase access to abortion.

Abortion rights advocates praised the proposal for bucking this trend.

“At a time when the vast majority of legislation introduced that relates to women’s health seeks to restrict, [Cuomo's] proposal stands out,” said Deborah Jacobs, Vice President of Policy and Advocacy at the Ms. Foundation for Women. “Not only is a step in the right direction, it reflects the values of most Americans when it comes to women’s health and safety.”

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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Governor Cuomo is reportedly “supportive” of a “Rape is Rape” bill proposed by the survivor of a brutal sexual assault by an NYPD officer, according to the Daily News.

26-year-old schoolteacher Lydia Cuomo went to Albany on Tuesday to push for legislation classifying forced anal and oral penetration as rape. Cuomo was viciously attacked by a drunk off-duty police officer named Michael Pena in Inwood on August 19, 2011 while waiting for her principal to pick her up before her first day teaching at Bronx elementary school.

Pena held his department-issued 9-mm handgun to her face and threatened to kill her before raping her. The jury convicted Pena of forcing anal and oral sex, but not rape. Eventually Pena pleaded guilty to two rape charges.

Pena was convicted of predatory sexual assault, which is even more serious than rape, according to local prosecutors. Rape is currently defined as vaginal penetration.

A criminal sex act conviction, which is what Pena received, applies to anal or oral sex, and is the same level felony as rape.

Prosecutors expressed concerns that the change Cuomo is lobbying for could make it more difficult to obtain convictions, as the existing rape code requires proving penetration.

The Manhattan DA’s office is supportive of a Senate version of the bill that would remove the requirement of penetration in rape cases.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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A gun buyback at Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church in Staten Island on Saturday brought in 55 firearms, police reported. Two were loaded, and two had the serial numbers scratched off.

One of the weapons was an SKS .762 caliber assault rifle with a 30-round magazine. Governor Cuomo’s recent gun legislation regulated magazines to a maximum of seven rounds.

47 of the 55 weapons were handguns. Some city politicians, including Councilwoman Letitia James, have been calling for legislation focusing on handgun regulation, arguing that handguns are the city’s major problem. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly recently noted that only two percent of arrests for illegal firearms involve assault weapons, while 60 percent of the city’s murders are committed using handguns.

The NYPD’s gun buy back program has taken in over 8,100 firearms since it started in 2008. The program is completely anonymous; people turning in guns will not be asked to show identification or permits.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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State Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin posted a video on YouTube Tuesday afternoon to publicly apologize to Governor Andrew Cuomo and “all of you” for an analogy “that [he] should not have made” at a press conference earlier that day.

McLaughlin, a Republican, said his constituents are “very upset” about the gun control bill Cuomo passed last month, which is why he was moved to speak the way he did.

The New York Post reported that McLaughlin said pushing the gun control bill to pass through a message of necessity — allowing an immediate vote and bypassing a three-day review process — was a “dictatorial thing to do” and that Hitler, Mussolini, and Moscow “would be proud.”

“Just like you, I’m human and I make mistakes sometimes,” McLaughlin said in the video.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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