Whisper
#byefelicia
Authorities say two uniformed officers encountered Akai Gurley between the seventh and eighth floors of a dimly lit stairwell during a vertical patrol in the Pink Houses.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...28-brooklyn-housing-project-article-1.2018724[...]
“nervous” rookie cop, in a tragic misfire, fatally shot an unarmed man without a word of warning in a Brooklyn housing project stairwell late Thursday
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The innocent victim’s helpless girlfriend recounted Friday how she was left to watch Akai Gurley die after the single gunshot tore into his chest during a routine police patrol gone horribly wrong.
“What happened last night was a very unfortunate tragedy,” said NYPD Commissioner William Bratton
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“... It appears this may have been in fact an accidental discharge.”
Officer Peter Liang, who fired the fatal shot, “heard a noise,” a police source told
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“It was dark. He must have been nervous.”
Gurley, 28, was not a suspect in any crime or engaged in illegal activity when Liang fired his weapon once in the pitch-black stairwell,
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Gurley 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.
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two only used the stairs because the building elevator was slow.
“I shot him accidentally,” Liang told colleagues afterward. His partner never fired his gun
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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
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“They didn’t identify themselves,” said Butler, 27, who began dating Gurley in January 2011. “No nothing. They didn’t give no explanation. They just pulled a gun and shot him in the chest.”
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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.”
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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. “
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‘Yeah, my boyfriend.’”
Gurley died at Brookdale University Hospital shortly after his arrival by ambulance
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“My heart goes out to the family of the young man who was lost,” said Mayor de Blasio. “We don’t know enough but it does appear to have been an accident. And look, we’re going to do a full investigation.”
Liang, who joined the force in January 2013, was placed on modified duty after turning in his gun and badge
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Local politician Charles Barron condemned the shooting as an outrage.
“They didn’t find a gun,”
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“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
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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.
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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.
Akai Gurley.
Blood stains the stairwell where an NYPD officer fatally shot Akai Gurley, 28.