Soldier arrested in N.Y. trooper killing

Staff sergeant had just shot his wife to death, officials say.

A state police trooper responding to reports of gunfire was shot to death by a soldier who had just killed his wife at their home near his Army base in northern New York, authorities said Monday.

Trooper Joel Davis was approaching the couple’s home in rural Theresa, near the Canadian border, when Staff Sgt. Justin Walters shot

him in the torso with a rifle, leaving him in a roadside ditch, according to police and court documents. Another trooper arrived and found Davis, 36, who died about an hour later at a hospital.

Walters’ wife, Nichole, was found dead in the driveway with multiple gunshot wounds. A female friend of hers, who was living on the property, also was shot, suffering non-life-threatening

injuries, police said. Davis had been a state police trooper for four years, after 10 years as a county sheriff ’s deputy in the area.

“He truly did love being a law enforcement officer,” family friend Chris Fletcher said. “One of his last texts to another one of his cousins was he couldn’t believe he got paid to do what he does.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said “the entire New York family grieves” for Davis. A married father of three teenagers, he was the commissioner of a youth baseball league in his tightknit community.

“It’s not just the police who suffer a loss like this,” said state police Superintendent George P. Beach II, not

ing that signs have already sprung up around the area to pay tribute to Davis.

Justin Walters, 32, was clad only in shorts when he was brought to a town court about 4 a.m. Monday to be charged with murder, WWNY-TV reported. Ordered held without bail, he was scheduled to be re-arraigned late in the day, authorities said.

A native of Zeeland, Michigan, Walters joined the Army in 2007 and did two one-year tours in Afghanistan, in 2009 and again from March 2011 to March 2012, Army officials said. Walters was stationed at Fort Drum, home of the 10th Mountain Division.

The sprawling post is home to about 15,000 soldiers who are among the most-deployed in the U.S. military. More than half the soldiers with families live off base in nearby towns in a region known for its harsh winters and farmland.

Fort Drum’s senior commander, Maj. Gen. Walter E. Piatt, called the slain trooper a hero.

“It takes an uncommon valor to run toward acts of terrible violence, to sacrifice for the safety of strangers,” Piatt said.

Army Staff Sgt. Justin Walters is escorted by New York State Police officers Monday outside the Le Ray Town Court in Le Ray, N.Y. Walters was charged with the killings of his wife and Trooper Joel Davis, who had responded to reports of gunfire WWNY-TV...