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Officer Did Everything Right After Shooting Akai Gurley, Lawyer Says

By Trevor Kapp | February 9, 2016 12:37pm
 Peter Liang is escorted out of court in Brooklyn after being charged with manslaughter, official misconduct and other offenses on February 11, 2015.
Peter Liang is escorted out of court in Brooklyn after being charged with manslaughter, official misconduct and other offenses on February 11, 2015.
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Spencer Platt/Getty Images

BROOKLYN SUPREME COURT — NYPD officer Peter Liang did everything right after fatally shooting unarmed Akai Gurley in the stairwell of a Brooklyn public housing complex, his lawyer said Tuesday.

But prosecutors argued that the shooting was no accident and that Liang was derelict in his duties after pulling the trigger.

At the end of a two week trial both sides tried to sway the jurors with closing arguments.

“As soon as Peter saw Mr. Gurley was shot, he went over the radio,” defense lawyer Robert E. Brown said during closing arguments in Liang's manslaughter trial.

“There was no hesitation.”

Liang's partner, Officer Shaun Landau, testified that he bickered with Liang for four minutes over who should call in the Nov. 20, 2014 shooting inside 2724 Linden Blvd.

But Brown said the officer on trial didn’t want to report shots fired over the radio for a simple accidental discharge in which he thought nobody was hurt.

It wasn’t until minutes later that Liang and Landau discovered that Gurley, the father of a 2-year-old girl who lived in Red Hook, was wounded, Brown said.

“From the time he realizes Mr. Gurley is shot to the time the lieutenant gets on scene, he never stops radioing for help,” Brown said.

Assistant District Attorney Joseph Alexis argued that Liang intentionally opened fire in Gurley's direction after getting spooked.

“He heard a sound in a darkened stairwell,” Assistant District Attorney Joseph Alexis said. “He had a working flashlight in his hand, and he never used the flashlight to see what the sound was below him.

"It's no accident that (the bullet) hit off the wall steps from where Akai Gurley stood," he added. "It's no accident that the bullet ripped through his heart and went into his liver."

Liang then tried to cover up his blunder instead of rushing to aid Gurley, the prosecutor charged.

“The cover up began almost immediately. And he said so!” Alexis said. “He went into that stairwell to pick up that shell casing so he could keep this secret, so nobody would know. That’s why they stayed upstairs for four minutes, because they didn’t want anyone to know.”  

“He was thinking about himself from the beginning,” he added. “He knew he could not explain or justify the shot he fired.”

Melissa Butler, Gurley’s girlfriend who he was visiting in East New York's Pink Houses, testified she gave him mouth-to-mouth following the instructions of a neighbor who was on the phone with emergency dispatchers.

But Brown claimed his client was distraught and that nothing he could have done would have saved Gurley.

“No CPR could’ve saved Mr. Gurley,” Brown said, citing testimony from a Medical Examiner employee.

The lawyer also argued that his client was poorly trained by the police academy to perform CPR.

“The actual turn on the mannequin… was two minutes out of two days of training,” he said. “I would argue that that’s not carefully trained in CPR.”

Brown acknowledged Liang later said he’d be fired, but claimed the remark came well after responders had attended to Gurley — not while he lay dying on the floor.

He described his client as a well-educated “son of Brooklyn” who simply wanted to give back to the city that raised him.

“He didn’t mean for Mr. Gurley to die on Nov. 20,” Brown said.

Prosecutors acknowledged that Liang didn’t mean to kill Gurley, but stressed that the officer was sworn to protect and serve, but instead killed an innocent.

“There are proud, brave cops who go out every day and every day, keep us safe. We honor those cops, we applaud those cops,” Alexis said.

“But Peter Liang falls short of that. Peter Liang is not one of those cops.”