The lawyer for the rookie NYPD officer, who investigators say accidentally shot and killed a man, wants the charges dropped. Officer Peter Liang was back in court Thursday for the first time since he was indicted in the death of Akai Gurley. Sheldon Dutes reports.
An attorney for the NYPD officer who police said accidentally shot and killed Akai Gurley in a Brooklyn housing complex stairwell has filed a motion to have charges against the rookie cop dropped.
The legal team representing officer Peter Liang asked a judge to drop manslaughter, misconduct and other charges Thursday at a courtroom in Brooklyn.
The judge didn't rule on the request but adjourned the court until June 23. Liang has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The hearing was the first court appearance for Liang since he was released without bail in February at an arraignment hearing. As with that hearing, protesters gathered outside the courthouse Thursday to demand justice for Gurley's family.
Liang and his partner were patrolling the Louis Pink Houses, a public housing development in East New York on Nov. 20, the night Gurley was shot. The officers had descended onto an eighth-floor landing when Gurley and a friend who had been braiding his hair opened a door to the seventh-floor landing because they didn't want to wait for the elevator to take them to the lobby.
The lights were burned out in the stairwell, leaving it "pitch black" and prompting both officers to use flashlights, police said after the shooting.
Liang, 27, possibly concerned about the dark stairwell in an area where several high-profile crimes had happened, had his gun drawn, police have said. He was about 10 feet from Gurley when, without a word and apparently by accident, he fired a shot, police said.
Gurley was struck in the chest. He made it down two flights of stairs after he was shot, but collapsed on the fifth-floor landing and lost consciousness, according to the woman, described as a both a friend and a girlfriend. He was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died, police said.
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Police officials pieced together the details of the shooting from radio reports and interviews with the woman and the second officer, but they have not spoken to Liang and won't until after the criminal proceedings are completed. Liang was placed on desk duty after the shooting and may be suspended without pay.
Scott Rynecki, an attorney representing Gurley's family, said the shooting was unjustified, regardless of intent. Gurley's domestic partner and mother of his toddler daughter filed a notice of claim that she was planning to sue the city in his death. Pat Lynch, the head of the NYPD's largest union, has said Liang deserves due process.
The shooting came amid tensions between the NYPD, Mayor de Blasio and the public following the chokehold death of Eric Garner. Those tensions rubbed raw a few weeks after Gurley's death, when a Staten Island grand jury decided not to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo in Garner's death, resulting in widespread protests across the city.
-- Sheldon Dutes contributed to this report.
