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A “nervous” rookie cop fatally shot an unarmed man without a word of warning in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project late Thursday, a police source said.
The victim’s helpless girlfriend recounted Friday how she was left to watch Akai Gurley die after the single gunshot tore into his chest without so much as a word of warning.
Officer Peter Liang, who fired the fatal shot, “heard a noise,” a police source told the Daily News. “It was dark. He must have been nervous.”
Gurley, 28, had just entered the stairwell near his steady sweetheart’s seventh floor apartment at about 11:15 p.m. when Liang fatally shot him in the chest, said the source and the girlfriend.
“I shot him accidentally,” Liang told colleagues afterward. His partner partner never fired his gun, the source said.
Devastated gal pal Melissa Butler, with tears pouring down her face Friday morning, said the officer coming downstairs from the eighth floor blasted Gurley without explanation.
The only sound was the deafening echo of the gunshot in the stairwell at the Pink Houses.
“They didn’t identify themselves,” said Butler, 27, who began dating Gurley in January 2011. “Nothing. They didn’t give no explanation. They just pulled a gun and shot him in the chest.”
The terrified couple ran down to the fifth floor before Gurley collapsed in a pool of blood. Butler, who was standing alongside her boyfriend when he was hit, recalled their frantic final moments together as she begged Gurley to keep fighting.
“Yo, you OK? Talk to me!” she recalled shouting. “He wasn’t saying nothing. That was the last thing I said to him.”
Butler said the officers never came down to check on the mortally wounded man, and medical help was only sent after she banged on a neighbor’s door for help.
“She opened the door and said, ‘Yo, is somebody hurt?’” recounted Butler, holding a damp washcloth over her red and swollen eyes. “I said, ‘Yeah, my boyfriend.’”
Gurley died at Brookdale University Hospital shortly after his arrival by ambulance, police said.
Local politician Charles Barron condemned the shooting as an outrage.
“They didn’t find a gun,” said the state assemblyman-elect. “And believe me, if he had anything, if he had a slingshot, they would have put that in the report. This is incredible.
“I want to hear the justification for this one.”
Just a short time earlier, Butler had braided her boyfriend’s hair inside her apartment. She said the slain man lived with his 2-year-old daughter in Red Hook, and was just about to start working for the city.
The NYPD, in a press release, said the two uniformed officers were on a vertical patrol in the building when they came down the stairs at about 11:15 p.m.
One of the officers fired a single shot, but further information was not provided. It unclear why the officer fired, and a police source said Gurley was not armed.
The NYPD press release described the stairwell as “dimly lit.”
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton was expected to brief the media about the shooting at an 11:30 p.m. press conference at police headquarters in Manhattan.
Both officers were taken to Jamaica Hospital for treatment of tinnitus.
Very sad. The NYPD needs to do a better job of training its officers. Also, it seems the rookies get the most dangerous assignments which seems counter-intuitive considering their lack of experience.
Horrible tragedy, no matter the man's past. The quality of new cops in the NYPD has been declining for over a decade. In the race to create diversity, hiring has been atrocious.
This is terrible on all accounts, and I truly don't know what the most just response is. The cop probably got a call about bad sht going on in a terrible, very dangerous place. He's in a stairway that seems was totally dark. He runs into a guy, is startled, and shoots him.
These cops aren't super humans - they start at what, $30k? So what type of talent do you think that truly attracts?
A guy lost his life. Terrible if he truly wasn't doing anything wrong. That being said - this guy thought he was in a dangerous situation. Should this man go to jail for making a tragic mistake on the job? No winners in this at all.
This is terrible on all accounts, and I truly don't know what the most just response is. The cop probably got a call about bad sht going on in a terrible, very dangerous place. He's in a stairway that seems was totally dark. He runs into a guy, is startled, and shoots him.
These cops aren't super humans - they start at what, $30k? So what type of talent do you think that truly attracts?
A guy lost his life. Terrible if he truly wasn't doing anything wrong. That being said - this guy thought he was in a dangerous situation. Should this man go to jail for making a tragic mistake on the job? No winners in this at all.
what kind of training do these cops have, that if you are startled you just take your gun out and start firing.
waits for the police record of being caught with a gram of marijuana 5 years ago or something to "justify" the murder in the mind of demonic people
First of all, how can you unholster your weapon and then aim and shoot it "accidentally"?? How do you go through all of that and it was an ACCIDENT?
Police unions are one of the biggest problems this country faces. You would think that an "accident" at your job causing someone to lose their life would result in getting ****in FIRED if you **** up....Not even getting into the criminality of his actions
"Accidental discharge" is going to be a tough sell. Even for an unintended discharge the trigger has to be pulled. Why was the cop's finger on the trigger if he didn't intend to shoot? Doesn't NYPD teach their officer's never to put their finger on the trigger unless they intend to immediately fire the weapon?
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Tragic story.
