The wounded tenant is a Mexican immigrant who speaks no English, police said, and may not have understood cops’ commands to put down the knife he carried outside to confront a man he said was trying to dislodge the air conditioning unit from his window on E. 148th St. near Courtlandt Ave. in Mott Haven.

It was the shooting victim who called 911 before dashing to the hallway and through a door leading to an alley over which the air conditioner hangs.

Separate videos show the victim in the alley, and one cop opening fire when he returns to the hallway. The shooting video shows the officer squeezing the trigger at a person off camera.

Police said a “butcher knife” was recovered from the scene.

“When he called, he spoke Spanish,” said Rohan Griffith, commanding officer of NYPD’s force investigation unit.

Griffith said officials need to determine if the officers and the tenant understood each other.

Neighbor Juan Rivera, 78, said cops responded quickly.

“I was walking my dog and so many cops came into the building,” Rivera said. “The detectives told me someone tried to steal the guy’s air conditioner [and] he went after the guy with a knife. They told him to drop the knife.”

Police said it was unclear if the man in the alley was trying to actually steal the appliance or remove it to get into the apartment.

The shooting happened within seconds.

“Bang, bang. Two shots,” Rivera said. “When they brought him out he was bleeding. I don’t think the shooting is totally right. … They didn’t waste any time shooting him.”

Neighbor David Bermudez, 25, said he also heard two shots.

“The lady cop shot him,” Bermudez said. “The guy was laid out. He was bleeding. I saw a lot of blood. I was scared and confused. The cops were telling me ‘you have to leave, you can’t stay here.’ The Bronx is getting worse and worse everyday.”

Griffith said police are still searching for the would-be thief.

Jasmin Thompson, 25, fled to a southern state after the Jan. 7 fracas, which left Jennira Roundtree mortally wounded after she was stabbed numerous times outside her building in the West Brighton Houses on Henderson Ave. near Broadway, prosecutors said Monday.

While on the lam, she was featured on podcast LFTG radio, where she told host Elliott Carterr she’s “not a killer.”

The altercation that Roundtree, 43, intervened in was sparked by a social media dispute involving her 13-year-old daughter and other girls, police sources and the victim’s family previously told the Daily News.

Also involved in the feud was Thompson’s cousin, whom the woman claims Roundtree’s son punched in the face a week before the confrontation, which police said involved about 20 women and girls.

“[I said] we need to speak to the parents,” Thompson said on the podcast. “Because this needs to end, because we all live in the same hood.”

But when Thompson arrived to the building to straighten out the disagreement, Roundtree and other women were swinging a golf club and a sock filled with locks, ready for a fight, according to the woman and her attorney, Mario Gallucci.

“They didn’t even talk, they just on that,” Thompson told Carterr. “She wasn’t being a mom, a real mom. I’m a mom.”

Thompson denied neighbors’ claims that a mob of 20 confronted Roundtree’s 12-year-old daughter, calling it “only like four of us and it was 20 of them.”

After Roundtree was stabbed numerous times about her body, Thompson claims she picked up the bloodied knife as she was “scared for” her life.

“Look, the mom is already on the floor,” Thompson narrated as she showed the podcast host video of the brawl. “So how are you all saying I did it?”

Thompson turned herself into the NYPD’s 120th Precinct Monday morning — six days after the fatal attack. She was charged with murder, manslaughter, assault and criminal possession of a weapon. She was held without bail following an arraignment in Staten Island Criminal Court.

In a 20-page filing, Bobover Yeshiva Bnei Zion, Oholei Torah, United Talmudical Academy, and Yeshiva Mesivta Arugas Habosem said reviewers refused to credit instruction from Jewish Studies and interfered in their hiring, among other objections to the process.

Yeshiva

“Taken together, these discriminatory practices would strip the Yeshivas of their essential Jewish character,” wrote Avi Schick, an attorney for the yeshivas at Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP. “If they can’t devote sufficient time to Jewish Studies with instruction in their original language … then they are no longer Jewish schools.”

“The Office of Civil Rights should exercise its oversight over these New York agencies that receive billions of dollars in federal funds annually by thoroughly investigating their discriminatory practices and remediating their discriminatory conduct.”

The civil rights complaint, filed a week before President-elect Trump is set to take office, takes aim at a process in state education regulations adopted in 2022, which may put religious and other private schools through a review of basic subjects, such as reading and math, to ensure they are at least “substantially equivalent” to those offered at public schools.

The U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights could not confirm receipt of the complaint late Monday.

A rep for the New York State Education Department said it could not comment in the suit itself but pushed back against its core claims.

“We disagree with the allegations, which constitute a challenge to State law,” said J.P. O’Hare, a spokesman. “We note that counsel for these complainants has previously unsuccessfully challenged the Board of Regents’ substantial equivalency regulations in court.”

Schick said the yeshivas are not challenging the state regulations themselves, but the alleged use of the reviews to “impose its secular views on these Jewish schools.” Private schools that are approved by an independent accreditor or have their students pass state-approved standardized tests are exempt from the review process.

Trump campaigned on “parental rights” to make decisions about their children’s education and a crackdown on allegations of antisemitism in schools.

In a statement released after the filing, Jewish advocates for yeshiva reform accused the four schools taking their action to a forum more likely to provide a favorable judgment, while a lawsuit is pending in New York’s highest court. The group, Young Advocates for Fair Education, has long accused some yeshivas of failing to prepare its graduates to fully participate in life outside of the Hasidic community if they so choose.

“Today’s federal civil rights complaint filed against the New York State and City Education Departments is nothing more than a desperate and cynical attempt at court shopping,” said Adina Mermelstein Konikoff, executive director of Young Advocates for Fair Education.

“The grievances outlined in this complaint have already been dismissed repeatedly in state court, and this latest maneuver reeks of bad faith.”

“Let’s be clear: this is not about protecting civil rights — it’s about shielding institutions from accountability while tens of thousands of children are denied a basic education,” she continued. “Teaching English, math, science, and social studies does not contradict Jewish values; it complements them.”

“It has been a very good week here in New York,” said Juliette Michaelson, MTA’s deputy chief of policy and external relations and a chief architect of the agency’s congestion pricing plan. “Just look out the window — there’s less traffic, quieter streets, and I think everybody’s seen it.”

While anecdotal evidence has abounded in the nine days since New York started charging drivers to drive on Manhattan’s surface streets at or below 60th St., Monday marks the first time the MTA has released data obtained by the tolling network.

According to the data collected last week, 499,016 vehicles entered the congestion tolling zone last Monday, the first weekday since tolling began. Those numbers steadily rose through the work week, with 561,604 vehicles entering the zone on Friday.

On average, that’s 539,217 vehicles a day — 7.5% fewer vehicles than the agency said would typically enter during a work week in January.

“These are significantly lower volumes than we would have expected without the program,” Michaelson said.

For those who do drive — or ride on the MTA’s buses — the data shows that the reduction in crossings has had a sizable impact on most commute times.

Comparing last Wednesday to an average Wednesday in January 2024, travel times improved across the board at all river crossings in the congestion zone.

A drive into Manhattan through the Lincoln Tunnel Wednesday was 39% faster than last January, according to the data. The Queens-Midtown Tunnel sped up 39%, and the Brooklyn Bridge sped up 28%. The smallest improvement was at the Manhattan Bridge — which still had 10% faster travel times than in January last year.

“For one day of data, to see such consistently high trip-time reductions is just very, very significant,” Michaelson said.

Similarly, east-west streets across the congestion zone saw speeds increase. With the exception of westbound traffic on 42nd St. and 23rd St., crosstown traffic times fell between 6% and 36%.

North-south travel times remained largely the same, however. Traffic on Third Ave. and Eighth Ave. sped up by more than 20%, but Second, Fifth and Ninth Aves. saw 1% longer travel times.

Michaelson and other MTA officials emphasized that the data is preliminary, and that the travel time data in particular is based on just one day of congestion pricing.

“This is still preliminary data,” Michaelson said.  “Travel patterns, we expect, will change.”

The MTA has not yet crunched the numbers on what the data means for tolling revenue — an income stream that is meant to back $15 billion in bonds to fund some of the agency’s biggest expansion and repair projects.

John McCarthy, MTA’s head of policy and external relations, told reporters to expect early revenue revenue data in “weeks, not months.”

The data comes as members of New York’s Republican delegation traveled to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend and reportedly discussed plans to kill the congestion toll with President Elect Donald Trump.

Trump has been a longtime opponent of the plan, and vowed early in his presidential run to undo it if elected — though it remains unclear what legal paths he would have to up-end a toll that’s administered by the state and has already been approved by federal regulators.

Asked about Trump’s threat prior to the MTA’s Monday data release, Mayor Adams said he wanted more information, and didn’t want to “throw more hysteria into this law of the land.”

“If the president decides an action such as that, I don’t control it,” he said.

Tiffany Raspberry, Adams’ intergovernmental affairs director, and Camille Joseph-Varlack, his chief of staff, will take on the deputy mayor roles effective immediately, Adams said at his weekly press conference Monday morning at City Hall.

Joseph-Varlack is becoming the “deputy mayor of administration,” while Raspberry’s being given the title “deputy mayor of intergovernmental affairs,” Adams told reporters. Raspberry’s deputy mayor title is new to the municipal bureaucracy, and Adams’ office said she’ll now coordinate intergovernmental affairs teams “across all city agencies,” while Varlack’s portfolio is expanding to include oversight of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.

Joseph-Varlack, who will also retain her chief of staff role, already makes a base annual salary of $287,663, the deputy mayor level pay grade, and won’t get a raise, according to Adams.

Raspberry, a longtime Adams ally who worked on and helped raise funds for his 2021 campaign, currently makes $260,000 and will get a salary bump to the deputy mayor level, he said.

Prior to the promotion, Raspberry applied recently to become Fordham University’s new vice president of external affairs — a job she ultimately didn’t get, according to a source directly familiar with the matter. A since-closed job posting for the Fordham post says it has a minimum starting salary of $310,000.

Adams, who has pleaded not guilty in a federal corruption indictment, has seen a large number of senior advisers depart his administration in recent months, several after becoming ensnared in corruption investigations of their own.

A Fordham University spokesman declined to comment Monday. Raspberry didn’t return a request for comment, but Adams spokeswoman Amaris Cockfield said her Fordham application played no factor in her promotion.

The elevation of Joseph-Varlack and Raspberry means Adams now has eight deputy mayors, more by one than other recent mayors, according to Louis Cholden-Brown, an attorney and City Charter expert. Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Ed Koch at certain points in their tenures had seven deputies, the highest number Cholden-Brown said he could recall.

With Josephine Stratman 

The specifics of her plan will be unveiled later this month, and will likely be ironed out during negotiations with state lawmakers, according to a press release from the governor’s office.

“We got to talk about cellphones in schools,” Hochul said at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, New York. “We won’t do that today, because it will make me very unpopular, I’m sure. But I did enough round tables with teenagers in schools, even around here.”

“One young woman said, ‘You got to save us from ourselves. We can’t put it down because we’re afraid we’re going to miss something. Someone could be getting together in the girls room right now and I can’t miss it, or they’re going to be talking about a party. They’re going to be talking about what I’m wearing. They’re mocking me out and bullying me.'”

The governor had been teasing limits on the devices since last spring, when former Chancellor David Banks was exploring a ban in New York City public schools, the state’s largest district. But Mayor Adams at the eleventh hour put the kibosh on those plans for this school year.

As part of the state budget, any restrictions will require approval by the Legislature, as opposed to an executive order by the governor. Hochul has repeatedly said cutting back on cellphone-use is necessary to combat youth mental health issues coming out of the pandemic.

“There’s so much pressure on all of you, and I’ve got to help you with that,” Hochul said. “That’s my job.”

Banks, who was pushed out by Mayor Adams in October after his phone was seized by federal investigators, has continued to advocate for school cellphone restrictions in his retirement. Earlier this month, he shared an op-ed in the Daily News on at least two social media platforms, renewing his call for a ban and distancing himself from Adams’ decision “to take more time to consider” it.

His successor, Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos, collected student cellphones when she was a principal in the Bronx. But the schools head, who previously served as Banks’ chief of staff and one of his deputies, has aligned herself with Adams during TV and radio appearances since the state legislative session kicked off last week.

“The mayor and I are in lockstep on this,” Aviles-Ramos said Sunday on CBS News New York’s The Point with Marcia Kramer. “It’s not that we don’t agree with cellphones not being in classrooms. We absolutely, absolutely don’t think they should be in classrooms, but we want to make sure is that that journey from great idea to implementation is a solid one.”

Aviles-Ramos also cast doubt on a cellphone policy as a cure-all for youth mental health: “It’s kind of like giving someone with chronic migraines an Advil every single day. At what point don’t you say, ‘Well, why do they have chronic migraines?’ We need to get to the root of the problem.”

New York City parents were divided Monday on whether they think schools should collect phones for the entirety of the school day.

“I just think that phones have taken over the lives of teenagers,” said a mom at Beacon High School in Hell’s Kitchen, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “They want to be on them 24/7. Their lives have become consumed by these devices.”

Beacon allows students to use their cellphones during free periods and lunch. Her child previously attended a school where phones were banned for all school hours, which she said she preferred.

“You as a parent try the best you can, but school is school. It shouldn’t be about looking at Instagram.”

Rima Izquierdo, a Bronx mom with three children in public schools, was in high school when 9/11 happened. She worries not only about that level of an emergency, but also about day-to-day incidents where phones allow kids to connect with parents or hold the school accountable, specifically for students with disabilities like her own.

Plus, she shares Chancellor Aviles-Ramos’ suspicions that a ban is a silver bullet for young people’s well-being.

“We talk a lot about IQ, but there’s a lot to be said about ‘EQ,’ emotional intelligence, and preparing students for the use of phones,” Izquierdo said. “They have access to their phones right before school and right after school. I just think it’s a Band-Aid, and we should focus on what changed with students and cellphones and the pandemic.”

“Late yesterday evening, we were made aware of a potential threat to our district,” Interim Superintendent of Schools Damen Cooper wrote in a note posted to the district’s website at about 5 a.m. “Upon receiving this information, we immediately contacted the Montclair Police Department and have been closely following their guidance.”

Police advised the district to close all schools until the potential threat could be addressed, Cooper wrote.

“At this time, I am unable to share specific details regarding the nature of the threat,” he continued. “However, please know that we are working collaboratively with law enforcement to monitor the situation and ensure the security of our schools.”

Just after 9:30 a.m. he issued an update, saying that “through the diligent efforts and collaboration with the Montclair Police Department, the threat we were addressing has been neutralized.”

He did not elaborate on the nature of the threat, while acknowledging the “anxiety and disruption for our entire school community” that the move had undoubtedly caused.

Montclair Mayor Renee Baskerville said she was closely monitoring the situation and in constant contact with both school officials and the police department, emphasizing that there was no immediate danger.

“I want to make clear to our community that the school closings today are a precautionary measure, and there is no immediate threat,” she said in a statement Monday.

Montclair is about 20 miles west of New York City.

“Please know that every step taken was guided by our unwavering commitment to the safety and well-being of our students, staff, and families,” Cooper said. “Your safety remains my highest priority. Thank you for your patience, understanding, and support throughout this time.”

Jasmin Thompson surrendered at the 120th Precinct stationhouse with her lawyer, Mario Gallucci, who told the Daily News the woman killed, Jennira Roundtree, 43, “was beating my client’s sister and mother with a golf club.”

“And my client reacted to that,” he said. “[Roundtree] also brought down a sock filled with locks and started swinging it at people. My client’s mother has bruises on her back.”

The stunning slay happened last Tuesday evening outside the West Brighton Houses on Henderson Ave. near Broadway, where Roundtree lived.

The brawl Roundtree intervened in was sparked by a social media dispute involving her 13-year-old daughter and other girls, police sources and the victim’s family said.

Gallucci said Thompson’s 19-year-old sister was at the center of the tensions.

It exploded in deadly violence when Roundtree’s daughter was confronted by about 20 girls and young women.

Friends of the daughter ran into the building to summon her older sister for help, according to neighbors, and Roundtree was also alerted.

“The mother went outside in defense of her daughter,” a police source told the Daily News at the time. “One person approached and stabbed her.”

Roundtree was rushed by medics to Richmond University Medical Center but she could not be saved.

“This was a dispute between kids and then the adults got involved,” a police source said Monday.

The killer ran off but by Wednesday the NYPD had identified Thompson as the suspect and circulated her photo on a wanted poster.

While on the lam, the wanted woman appeared as a guest on podcast LFTG radio, where she claimed she only picked up the bloodied knife after Roundtree was stabbed.

“Look, the mom is already on the floor,” Roundtree narrated as she showed host Elliott Carterr video of the brawl. “So how are you all saying I did it?”

“I picked it up,” she added. “I’m scared for my life. I picked up y’all weapon.”

Alternatively, Gallucci said it was tragic that someone was killed but claims Thompson’s use of force was justified, given the weapons he says Roundtree was wielding. He also said cellphone video backs his client’s self-defense claim.

Despite the claim, during an arraignment in Staten Island Criminal Court Monday afternoon, prosecutors alleged Thompson fled the city and headed to an unnamed southern state after the slaying. At least seven family members including a cousin and her boyfriend showed up in court to support her.

“This defendant while armed with a sharp object stabbed the victim in the chest, causing the victim’s demise,” a prosecutor said in court.

Thompson is also charged with slashing a second victim’s arm during the melee. She was ordered held without bail and is due back in court Friday.

Roundtree was doing what any loving mother would do, a relative said on Wednesday.

“She only wanted to protect her baby,” the devastated relative told The News. ”She only went outside to get her child in the house, only to find her child with a pack of more than a dozen girls on her. She tried to pull her child away and they all jumped her.”

“I’m not sure how it started,” the relative added. “But I do know it shouldn’t have ended in murder.”

In the days before her death, Roundtree, who worked as a security guard, according to neighbors, appears to have been involved in her own social media scrum.

“Just punched a MF with both hands at the same time I’m not playing this year,” she posted on Facebook Jan. 3.

“B—h I’m an officer now so no I’m not fighting I’m gonna let you swing n pop your a– then you gonna go to jail for a minimum of 7 years,” she posted in her final Facebook message a day later, just three days before she was killed. “F–k wit me if you want to.”

The relative believes that dispute was unrelated to her daughter’s.

In addition to murder, Thompson was charged with manslaughter, assault and weapon possessions. She has prior arrests for assault, petty larceny and reckless endangerment, all in 2019, a police source said, and two assault arrests that year. Last year, she was hit with a contraband charge while behind bars, the source said.

She did not answer reporter’s questions as she was lead out of the stationhouse to appear in Staten Island Criminal Court.

Michael Bookhart was knifed in the chest in the home he shared with the suspect on E. 138th St. near Brook Ave. in Mott Haven about 10:40 p.m. on Sunday, cops said.

The victim’s 23-year-old girlfriend, whose name was not immediately released, was arrested at the scene. Charges against her were pending.

A neighbor whose apartment shares a wall with the unit where the man was stabbed said she heard the couple arguing for about two hours, but she didn’t know any violence occurred until police arrived later.

“[Cops] knocked on my door to ask what I heard,” said Tiffany Boyce, 39. “All I heard was her yelling and then I heard the cops come.”

“It’s a regular thing for them. Always fighting every night,” Boyce added.

Medics rushed Bookhart to Lincoln Hospital, but he could not be saved.

“I never saw them together,” she added. “I just usually see her.”

The suspect was nice to her when they passed each other in the hallway.

“She just seemed normal,” Boyce said. “One time I locked myself out and she let me in.”

She said Bookhart was pleasant, too.

“He was quiet,” Boyce said. “I just seen him in passing, going up the stairs. He kept to himself.”

Walden’s $629,736 cash pull in the latest period, which spanned between Oct. 8 and this past Saturday, is larger than what any of Mayor Adams’ other challengers have raised in a single previous reporting window. However, it won’t be clear until Wednesday’s public disclosure deadline how much money the other 2025 mayoral candidates, including Adams, raised in the most recent span.

Walden, who shared his fundraising numbers exclusively with the Daily News ahead of the deadline, said he also has about $300,000 of his own money in his independent mayoral campaign account, giving him roughly $930,000 in cash on hand as June’s primary elections loom six months away. Only ex-City Comptroller Scott Stringer and Adams had larger 2025 campaign cash balances as of the last reporting period, which ended Oct. 7.

“Friends and strangers stepped up in huge numbers to pledge their support for our campaign and an independent path forward for New York City. We achieved our goal; out-raising all the challengers in less than half the time they had before I entered the race,” said Walden, who has never before campaigned for public office. “We will be fully funded by the height of the campaign season. And we will be pounding miles of pavement to speak with voters across the five boroughs about my plan for restoring integrity and accountability to City Hall.”

Still, Walden isn’t expected to be eligible for public matching funds when the Campaign Finance Board issues its second round of payments Wednesday.

Walden’s $629,736 came from 834 individual contributors, 492 of whom are New York City residents, he said. In order to be eligible for matching funds, mayoral candidates need to raise at least $250,000 from 1,000 city residents.

Walden told The News he hasn’t decided yet whether he’s going to participate in the public matching funds program. If he opts out of it, he could accept as much as $3,850 from each donor, more than the $2,100 that candidates who participate in the program can collect.

The sizable first fundraising run from Walden, who launched his campaign Oct. 23, gives him a competitive edge as he mounts a third-party mayoral bid.

As an independent, Walden hasn’t absolutely ruled out running in the June 24 Democratic primary in which Adams already faces a sprawling field of challengers. But Walden says he may seek the Republican nomination, too, in addition to running as an independent in November’s general election.

Petitioning for the primaries begins at the end of February.

A seasoned litigator with a history of representing various New York politicians, including potential 2025 mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo, Walden has pitched himself as a government expert inspired by Michael Bloomberg.

With Adams’ federal indictment looming over the 2025 race, Walden has made rooting out corruption in city government a key plank in his campaign, recently floating a proposal to give the city Department of Investigation more power to go after crooked politicians. Walden is currently representing Joseph Jardin, a top FDNY official who alleges he was pressured by Adams to approve the opening of the Turkish consulate in Manhattan in 2021, a key episode in the mayor’s indictment, to which he pleaded not guilty.

Previously, Stringer held the distinction of drawing in the most cash in a single reporting period out of all the candidates running against Adams, raising just shy of $411,000 for his Democratic mayoral campaign between January 2024 and July 2024.

Stringer was the only candidate who received the Campaign Finance Board’s first public matching funds payment on Dec. 16, netting him $2 million for a total cash balance of $2.3 million.

Adams, whose 2025 campaign has a $3 million cash balance, was also eligible for matching funds last period. But the CFB denied him the payment, citing concerns about his indictment, which alleges he solicited illegal straw donations and bribes from Turkish government operatives in exchange for political favors. Adams is expected to stand trial in April, just weeks before the Democratic mayoral primary.

Several other 2025 candidates, including Comptroller Brad Lander, have said they expect to be eligible for matching funds Wednesday. All the candidates in the mayoral field, which also includes Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, Queens state Sen. Jessica Ramos, Brooklyn state Sen. Zellnor Myrie and ex-Bronx Assemblyman Michael Blake, are expected to have their latest fundraising hauls disclosed Wednesday as well.