Family seeks answers in NYC police shooting
Associated Press
NEW YORK
Stunned relatives of an unarmed man killed by a rookie police officer in a dark public-housing stairwell looked on as the Rev. Al Sharpton and public officials demanded a full investigation Saturday into what law-enforcement officials have termed an apparent accident.
“We’re not demonizing the police,” Sharpton said, but “this young man should not be dead.”
Police said the fatal shooting Thursday night of Akai Gurley in Brooklyn’s gritty East New York neighborhood appears accidental. But “how do we know until there is a thorough investigation of all that happened?” Sharpton asked.
He spoke at a rally in Harlem, standing alongside Gurley’s 2-year-old daughter, her mother and several elected officials. Gurley’s relatives remained silent during and after the rally.
City police often conduct “vertical patrols” inside public housing by going from roofs down staircases that sometimes are havens for crime. Police Commissioner William Bratton has said the patrols are needed, and the development where Gurley was shot recently had seen a shooting, robberies and assaults.
Officer Peter Liang and his partner, also new to the force, were patrolling a pitch-dark stairwell with flashlights late Thursday, police said. Gurley, 28, was leaving his girlfriend’s apartment after she had braided his hair, according to the girlfriend, who is not his daughter’s mother.
Police said the officers walked down the stairs onto an eighth-floor landing when Gurley and his girlfriend opened a stairwell door one floor down, after giving up on waiting for an elevator. Police said Liang, patrolling with his gun drawn, fired without a word and apparently by accident, hitting Gurley from a distance of about 10 feet.