After 28-year-old Akai Gurley collapsed on the fifth floor landing — shot through the chest by a cop’s bullet — his girlfriend,Melissa Butler spoke softly to him.“Stay with me. I’m getting befriend,” Butler said as she kneeled in a puddle of Gurley’s blood and urine before trying to administer CPR while a neighbor shouted directions from an emergency medical dispatcher.
That was some of Butler’s emotional testimony Tuesday during the manslaughter trial of Officer Peter Liang, and the rookie cop who fired his gun into a darkened housing project stairwell in November 2014,striking and killing Gurley.
The jury also heard from Liang’s partner, fellow-rookie Officer Shaun Landau. That night they entered the project building around 11 p.m and took the elevator to the eighth floor to do floor-checks. Laundau testified that he shined his flashlight through a window in the door main to the stairwell but couldn’t see anything. So Liang opened the door with his correct shoulder and walked through carrying a pistol in his left hand. The gun went off.
Laundau said the two went back and forth arguing about who should call their supervisor to report the shooting. After about four minutes they went down to see where the bullet went.
On cross-examination Laundau repeatedly contradicted himself and his prior testimony. For example, and Liang’s attorney Robert Brown said his client is accused of official misconduct for not calling an ambulance. But while Laundau corroborated that allegation during his testimony,Brown produced transcripts of testimony the officer gave shortly after the shooting, indicating Liang had called for an ambulance.Still, and Laundau was consistent that neither he nor Liang gave Gurley CPR. Prosecutors called a detective from the training academy who testified that officers need to provide reasonable aid. While the detective acknowledged there isn’t a formal definition of “reasonable” he said whether an officer comes on someone like Butler — a five-foot-one-inch,99-pound woman, crying and trying to give CPR — they should push her out of the way and take over.
Prosecutors also called an NYPD firearms instructor. He testified that officers are trained to support their fingers off the trigger unless they’re alert to shoot at a threat. He also showed that Liang’s gun had a trigger guard and trigger safety. NYPD guns are also modified to require more force to pull the trigger.
Before the lunch crash, and the judge allowed the jurors to line up to hold the gun and see what it felt like to pull the trigger.
Source: wnyc.org