NEW YORK — A rookie police officer who fired into a darkened stairwell at a Brooklyn public housing complex, accidentally killing a man who had been waiting for an elevator, has been indicted in his death, a lawyer said Tuesday.
Officer Peter Liang will appear in court Wednesday in the November shooting death of 28-year-old Akai Gurley, according to Scott Rynecki, an attorney representing Gurley’s family. The charges against Liang weren’t immediately clear.
Patrick J. Lynch, head of Liang’s union, said he deserves due process.
“The fact that he was assigned to patrol one of the most dangerous housing projects in New York City must be considered among the circumstances of this tragic accident,” Lynch said.
The indictment comes after mass protests and calls for reform of the grand jury system nationwide following a Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict a white police officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, a black man, and a Missouri grand jury’s decision not to indict a white officer in the death of Michael Brown, a black 18-year-old.
Gurley was black. Liang is Asian-American.
On Nov. 20, Liang and his partner were patrolling the Louis Pink Houses, a public housing development in Brooklyn’s gritty East New York neighborhood.
The officers had descended onto an eighth-floor landing when, 14 steps away, Gurley and the woman who had been braiding his hair opened a door into the seventh-floor landing after giving up their wait for the elevator so he could head 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, for reasons unclear, also had his gun drawn, police said. He was about 10 feet from Gurley when, apparently by accident, he fired a shot, police said.
Police officials pieced together the details of the shooting from radio reports and interviews with the girlfriend and the second officer.
The indictment comes during an uneasy period between the nation’s largest police force and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s City Hall. A rift widened when police unions expressed outraged that de Blasio spoke of warning his own son, who is half-black, to be wary when dealing with police.
And when two officers were killed in an ambush weeks later, police union leaders blamed de Blasio for fostering an anti-NYPD atmosphere. Hundreds of police officers repeatedly turned their backs on the mayor — including at the slain cops’ funerals — and participated in a work slowdown.
“No matter the specific charges, this case is an unspeakable tragedy for the Gurley family,” de Blasio said. “We urge everyone to respect the judicial process as it unfolds.”
